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MacPacker - Open Source Archive Manager for macOS

sarensw

sarensw

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi everyone,

I wanted to introduce MacPacker, an open-source archive manager for macOS that I've been building since 2023.

It originally started as a small archive preview tool for tar.lz4 files with support for nested archives because that was exactly what I needed at the time. Three years later, it has grown into a full archive manager supporting more than 40 archive formats. You can browse archives without extracting them first, inspect nested archives, and extract individual files or entire folders.

The reason I'm posting today is that MacPacker has reached an important milestone. With yesterday's v0.18 release, it can now create and edit ZIP archives. ZIP is the first supported editable format, with more planned in future releases.

MacPacker is available through several channels:
The project is fully open source, and I'm always interested in feedback, feature requests, and bug reports.

macpacker-demo.gif
 
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The .. is a neat touch for terminal folks, but I think it would be better and more Mac-native to have a tree structure, like Finder's list mode.
 
!!! said:
The .. is a neat touch for terminal folks, but I think it would be better and more Mac-native to have a tree structure, like Finder's list mode.
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Agreed. The quick look integration already uses a tree. I just need to port this to the main window. The challenge with trees are nested archives (not supported in quick look). But I’ll figure it out.
 
Excellent! Have you thought about including parallels format? I see you included vdi · vhd · vhdx · vmdk but not parallels format.
 
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startergo said:
Excellent! Have you thought about including parallels format? I see you included vdi · vhd · vhdx · vmdk but not parallels format.
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Good point. This wasn't on my radar yet, but surely makes more sense than the VMWare ones. Those got included because of a users request. I'll have to look at how to support parallels. And especially automated testing this will be a challenge.
 
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Possible bug: Text files directly opened from a password protected zip file appear empty. MacPacker v0.18.0 on macOS Sequoia 15.7.7 (24G720)
 
Other possible bugs:
- MacPacker is overwriting extracted files without warning.

- selecting “Icon and text” in the Toolbar does not persist.

- zip archive appears as empty, but is extracted correctly.
I’ve attached the archive (www.subs.ro_$-1972.zip), downloaded from https://subs.ro/subtitrare/descarca/$-1972/130235
I presumed that the $ symbol in the name might be the cause, but renaming the archive to “test.zip” has no effect.
 

Attachments

@bogdanw thanks for that.

MacPacker is overwriting extracted files without warning
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This is a known limitation right now. But I have introduced the progress window lately, this should allow me to add some kind of decisions there as well (similar ot TotalCommander maybe). I'll check that > https://github.com/sarensw/MacPacker/issues/140

selecting “Icon and text” in the Toolbar does not persist
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Issue created: https://github.com/sarensw/MacPacker/issues/141

zip archive appears as empty, but is extracted correctly
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I tried a few other downloads from subs.ro and had no issues to view the content. I couldn't find anything that is titled $-1972, though. Sorry for not downloading your attached zip here. I've been scammed too often to not be cautious anymore.
 
Video of the bug for www.subs.ro_$-1972.zip with all 3 engines.


You can search on the site using the IMDb unique id of the movie: tt0068152

One interesting observation, the XAD engine preservers the original creation date of the archived file.
 
sarensw said:
Sorry for not downloading your attached zip here. I've been scammed too often to not be cautious anymore.
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Speaking of security, given the recent 7-zip exploitable vulnerability, you should mention the version of the engines used in MacPacker and include the CVEs fixed in the release notes.
18 July 2026 CVE-2026-14266 "7-Zip fixes RCE flaw exploitable with malicious archives"
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...rce-flaw-exploitable-with-malicious-archives/
"7-Zip version 26.02 was released on June 25 to fix a remote code execution vulnerability that could allow attackers to execute malicious code by convincing users to open specially crafted compressed files."
 
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Good point. I should mention this somewhere. The update to 26.02 is planned anyway for the upcoming release. Currently, it is on 26.01
 
Is there a chance for a full ZIPX support? I occasionally get files compressed with the special additional JPEG-compression included in that format…
 
@bogdanw , 7zip 26.02 and the fix for that subs.ro_$-1972.zip file is now fixed and released with v0.18.1-beta.2 (download via GitHub releases)

@a.borque : What do you mean by "full" zipx support? ZIPX itself is supported to be opened and previewed. and extract files out of it. But I might not support all use cases with these right now. Can you give it a try and see if it works as expected?
 
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ZIPX includes a special compression method for JPEG-files that is not supported by most archivers that cannotherwise open ZIPX-archives (e.g. RAR can open ZIPX but fails ones the JPEG algorithm is used).
 
@bogdanw v0.18.1-beta.3 contains the fix for "selecting “Icon and text” in the Toolbar does not persist"

@a.borque I assume you refer to the mode 96 which is a special mode that winzip applies to jpeg files that are compressed using zipx. I was able to generate one of those files with sample jpeg using Winzip for macOS. Then, I was also able to preview that one using MacPacker and extract the image. Can you double check whether this works on your side with those files you occassionally got sent? (please try with the latest v0.18.1-beta.3; should have worked before, but just to be sure)
 
Thanks for the confirmation. v0.18.1 is now available. Store and Brew usually takes one or two days more. I'm looking into the other points as well.
 
The XAD engine doesn't have the problem with password protected zip files. Text files are correctly opened directly from the archive. Only the 7-zip engine generates empty files. I tested in MacPacker v0.18.0 and v0.18.1.

Another possible bug: when the wrong password is entered for a zip protected archive, there is no message, MacPacker displays extracting 0% and goes into 100% CPU usage.
 
Thanks for that. The number of tests for the password support is really thin atm. I'll add more test cases tomorrow and fix all the related issues.
 
@bogdanw OMG. You opened pandoras box with the password issues 😅. I've been looking into this the past 18hrs and noticed that my first implementation was way too basic. And the unit test was a false positive. I found and fixed many issues in this regard and just delivered a v0.19-beta.1. More test cases, more format specific edge cases.

For example, I learned that you can have archives with encrypted entries, and archives where also the header is encrypted. Depending on that, you'd have to show the password dialog when the archive is opened (to decrypt the header) or when a file is exctracted. This is just one example of learnings. Now, 7z, zip and rar should have full password support (based on my best knowledge).

There's one more thing that I need to change for v0.19 which I will do tomorrow (hopefully) (or rather today, it is 1:30am). Then I will release this version. Fingers crossed.
 
I was testing with an archive with encrypted contents, without encrypted header, created by BetterZip.

With v0.19.0-beta.1 the wrong password is identified, there is no high CPU usage, the files are opened correctly after entering the right password. I disabled “Automatic engine selection” and tested with XAD and 7-Zip.

I haven’t yet managed to create a zip file with an encrypted header.
 
From what I understand there is only some special PKWARE extension that supports encrypted headers in zip. An edge of an edge case. This seems to be more common in rar and 7z files. You can check the password protected archives that I have created and published as part of this journey here: MacPacker Test Archives

I'm working on full encryption support (including all other settings) when creating a zip right now. But this will take another week or two I guess.
 
Apparently, while the zip format supports an encrypted header, no application can create such a zip archive.

I created a 7z archive (7zz a -mhe=on -p"Password" archive.7z /path/to/file or folder) and MacPacker had no problem with it.

Nice, detailed message for XAD “Could not open archive.7z with the XAD engine. If the archive has an encrypted header, switch to 7-Zip in Settings → Archive Formats, or turn on Automatic engine selection.”
 
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