Settings – Extensions
BetterZip ships with quite a few macOS extensions, two of which have options that can be set through the main app: the Quick Look extension that previews archives anywhere in macOS, and the Finder Sync extension that adds the BetterZip button and contextual menus in the Finder. This tab configures both of them.
Quick Look Sub-tab
Apple removed the option to save settings inside Quick Look generators, so BetterZip stores them here instead. The extension reads them on every preview.
Show Columns
Six checkboxes pick which columns the file listing in the preview displays: Modification date, Size, Packed size, Ratio, Kind, Attributes. The Name column is always shown.
Packages are expandable
Treat macOS packages (.app, .framework, etc.) as folders in the preview, so you can see what’s inside them.
Show hidden files
Include files whose names start with a dot in the preview listing.
Don’t list tar archives larger than N MB
Listing very large tarballs forces a full sequential scan, which can be slow. Setting a megabyte ceiling tells the Quick Look extension to skip the contents listing for tar archives beyond that size and just show the archive’s header info.
Finder Sub-tab
The Finder Sync extension integrates BetterZip with Finder. The toolbar button and contextual menu can be toggled independently.
Show BetterZip button in Finder windows
Adds a BetterZip button to the Finder toolbar. Click it to compress or extract the selected items with your default preset; the drop-down lists all your presets.
Show BetterZip menu in Finder’s contextual menus
Adds a BetterZip submenu to right-click menus in Finder, on the Desktop, and elsewhere. Same actions as the toolbar drop-down.
Show only the default extract or compress action
A leaner contextual menu: just one action (the default preset), no submenu.
Show additional actions
Adds extras like Open in BetterZip, Test, Start collecting, etc. to the contextual menu and the toolbar button drop-down.
Hide Finder Contextual Menu Icon
The BetterZip icon next to the contextual menu entry takes up some horizontal space. Hide it for a less distracting(?) menu.
Limit the extension to these folders
BetterZip’s Finder Sync extensions is normally enabled everywhere. Check this option and add folders to the list to restrict the BetterZip button and badges to a subset of your file system. Useful if you only want BetterZip to be active in your Downloads folder or a specific project tree. Also, cloud drives like iCloud Drive and Dropbox usually don’t work with other extensions: a limitation of Apple’s extension architecture.