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Logging

BetterZip 6’s logging keeps a separate log per archive instead of dumping everything into one stream. Logs live as plain text files on disk and survive across launches, and most file paths inside them are clickable so you can find a file in Finder with one click.

The Transcript Window

Open it from Window > Transcript (or press ⌥⌘T). The window has a sidebar on the left with two sections:

  • Debug: one entry per calendar day. Holds messages that aren’t tied to a specific archive (general app activity, errors before an archive is opened, debug output).
  • Archives: one entry per archive BetterZip has touched. Holds everything BetterZip and the external tools logged while working on that archive.

Click an entry to see its contents in the right-hand pane. File paths in the log are real links: click to reveal the file in Finder.

Where the Files Live

Log files are stored in:

~/Library/Application Support/com.macitbetter.betterzip/logs/

Debug logs are named after the date (2026-05-15.log); archive logs are named after the archive. They’re plain UTF-8 text: open them in any editor, grep them, attach them to a bug report.

Toolbar and Context Menu

The toolbar has a single Clear Logs button with a drop-down: Older than a week, Older than a month, or All. Cleared logs are moved to the Trash, so you can fish them back out if you didn’t mean to.

Right-click any entry in the sidebar for:

  • Move to Trash: deletes the selected log (or ⌫).
  • Show in Finder: reveals the log file itself.
  • Show Archive in Finder: reveals the archive the log belongs to.
  • Sort By > Name / Date: reorder the sidebar; clicking the active key again flips the direction.

Verbosity

How much detail gets logged is controlled by Settings > Advanced > Amount of debug output written to the console. The popup offers three levels:

  • Debug (lots): everything, including verbose tracing. The default; useful when you need diagnostics.
  • Warnings: warnings and errors only.
  • Errors: errors only.

Auto-Cleanup and Memory-Only Mode

BetterZip can age out old log files for you. Set the cutoff in Settings > Advanced > Purge log files: Never (keep everything), 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, 1 year. Files are kept until they age past the cutoff, then moved to the Trash. Checks run in the background no more than once an hour.

The same popup also has a Don’t log to files option. In that mode BetterZip accumulates log text in memory for the current session only: the Transcript window still works, but nothing gets written to disk and everything is forgotten when you quit.