Basics
Supported Formats
Which archives Archydes can open, create and edit, and which encryption it understands.
Overview
| Format | Open and extract | Create | Edit | Password |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZIP | yes | yes | yes | read: ZipCrypto, AES; create: AES-256 |
| 7z | yes | yes | yes | AES-256, including encrypted file names |
| RAR (1.5 to 7, including solid) | yes | no | no | yes, including encrypted file names |
| tar, tar.gz, tar.xz, tar.zst, tar.bz2 | yes | yes | yes | – |
| ISO, CAB, LHA, cpio, deb, rpm, warc | yes | no | no | – |
single .gz, .xz, .bz2, .zst files | yes | no | no | – |
Archydes reads multi-part RAR, ZIP and 7z archives as one archive; see multi-part archives.
What’s not possible
- Creating RAR: Only RARLAB’s software may write the RAR format. For creating archives, there’s ZIP, 7z and tar; with Convert… in the Finder menu, you can turn a RAR into a ZIP or 7z.
- DMG images: macOS opens these itself when you double-click them.
Old file names
ZIP archives from older Windows PCs often store umlauts in the CP437 character set, and CAB and LHA archives from Japan in Shift-JIS. Archydes detects this and shows the names legibly instead of Pr�sentation.pptx.
What’s hidden
__MACOSX folders, ._ files and .DS_Store are Mac leftovers created when other apps compress files. Archydes hides them and doesn’t extract them.