This is the beta test update channel for BetterZip. The versions marked as "Beta" offered through this channel may be less stable than regular versions. If you experience any problems, please do report them via email and by submitting crash reports including your email address, so I can get in touch with you if necessary. Thank you!

Version 5.3.4 - 2023-04-11 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Zstandard V 1.5.5 for Intel Macs.

Version 5.3.3 - 2023-04-11 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

Bug Fixes

• Updated Zstandard to V 1.5.5.
• Sped up some operations with large folders containing multi-volume rar files.
• When creating multi-volume rar archives with more than 9 volumes, BetterZip would show an error message after successfully creating the archive.
• Under certain conditions, BetterZip did not offer to repair rar files with missing parts when .rev files were available.
• Tokens for automatically created filenames didn't work correctly in some localizations.

Version 5.3.2 - 2023-03-09 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

Bug Fixes

• A regression in BetterZip 5.3 could prevent creating rar archives from a single folder.
• Split zip files with extensions z01,… couldn’t be extracted. It works again.
• I updated the actions for DropZone 4.
• The Quick Look extension wouldn’t resize correctly on macOS 10.15 Catalina.
• Removed an old piece of code that manipulated the “Recents documents” menu to work around a bug in a previous version of macOS which is no longer needed, but still changed the order of items when sorting them by date in other apps.

Version 5.3.1 - 2023-02-12 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

Enhancements

• Updated zstandard to v 1.5.4 for improved performance on Apple Silicon Macs.

Bug Fixes

• The Share toolbar button didn’t work under certain conditions.
• The navigation stack (go back/forward) wasn’t reset when opening another archive from the file browser sidebar.
• The title of the preferences/settings window now matches the menu item title on macOS Ventura.

Version 5.3 - 2022-11-15 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

Enhancements

• Added option to not have an icon in the Finder contextual menu. (BetterZip > Preferences > Advanced)
• Added a size limit for tar archives to be listed in the Quick Look extension. Since compressed tar files can take a time proportionate to their size to list, it can stall the system for a long time, if you try to Quick Look a very large archive. If you ever run into this problem, set an MB limit in BetterZip > Preferences > Quick Look.

Bug Fixes

• The set password button in the preset configuration was disabled without a hint why, when the password manager was locked. This should be easier to understand now.
• The columns in the presets table were too narrow and some headers were cut off.
• Increased the size of the Quick Look panel and optimized column widths.
• When BetterZip was installed in a folder with a space character in its name, extracting tar based formats could crash BetterZip.
• Since the rar commandline utility is now available as Intel or Apple Silicon executable, BetterZip can download, install, and update the version fitting your Mac.
• The AppleScript unarchive option “receptacle” did not work.
• Rewrote the Alfred workflows, since macOS no longer bundles Python 2.
• ISO files were mounted as .BetterZipTempfolder; now the volume name will be the filename without extension.
• The option “Don’t include the single root folder in the archive” prevented the display of the save panel when compressing a single folder.
• Fixed some string translations.
• The icon for the “files” preferences tab was missing.
• Quarantining extracted executables did not work under certain conditions.
• In save panels, the automatic loading of a preset that does not use zip format could lead to a double extension, e.g., name.zip.rar.

Version 5.2 - 2021-12-14 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

Version 5.2b1 - 2021-11-25 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

New Features

• Create ISO images with various formats.
• You can now use the parent folder name of the compressed files as a variable in a save preset’s filename pattern. If items from multiple source folders are packed together, the nearest common ancestor will be used (the same folder that would be used when selecting “next to original” as destination folder.)

Bug Fixes and Enhancements

• Open more variations of ISO images, e.g., UDF format
• Archive operations are now timed and the final operation time is added to the transcript window and shown in the system notifications.
• Added a column for the compression method (STORE, DEFLATED, etc.)
• On older macOS versions the Quick Look generator would sometimes not work correctly.
• tbz2 is now supported as a filename extension.
• Fixed the size of the lock icon in the statusbar on macOS 12.
• When extracting RAR archives with .r99, .s99, etc. pieces, these 99er parts were not moved correctly after successful extraction, if a move operation (trash or other folder) was specified in the preset.
• Fixed error when extracting with a preset with a forced encoding.

Version 5.1.1 - 2021-06-24 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

New Features

• Support for opening and extracting single (non-tar) zst and brotli archives.

Bug Fixes and Enhancements

• BetterZip 5.1 couldn't open, extract, or create tar archives on macOS 10.13 and 10.14.
• The drop areas on the drop bar were skewed on macOS Big Sur.
• BetterZip 5 couldn't open rpm archives and iso disk images.
• The Direct Mode menu item didn’t show a check mark when it was toggled on.
• Fixed a crasher that could occur when viewing or Quick Looking files in archives under certain conditions.
• Fixed a crasher that could occur when saving archives under certain conditions.
• Contextual menu commands “Open in new window/tab” in the Favorites sidebar are now being disabled for non-archive items.
• When an archive cannot be handled, is damaged, or password protected, the Quick Look extension will no longer display annoying error messages.
• A gz file inside an rpm archive couldn’t be extracted.
• When no encoding was set in an extract preset, the drop-down button in the preferences displayed “Arabic (DOS)” instead of “Detect Automatically”.
• Increased default panel size and enhanced column resizing in the Quick Look extension.

Version 5.1 - 2021-03-18 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

New Features

• BetterZip is now a universal app that supports the new Apple Silicon based Macs natively.
• Added a new Quick Look extension: Finder can use this in the preview sidebar and when in column view where the previous QL generator was not used. Unlike the old-style generator, the new extension is not HTML, but based on standard UI elements which gives it a more natural look and feel. Like the old Quick Look generator, the new Quick Look extension is free to use for all users. You can configure a few default settings through BetterZip’s preferences window. This also works without purchasing a BetterZip license. Enable and disable the extension in System Preferences > Extensions.
• Added a preset option to show a file panel to ask for the destination folder into which to move the archive/originals after a successful operation.
• Added a preset option to force a filename encoding when extracting a Windows zip archive.

Enhancements

• The Helpers tab now shows the currently installed version of the rar helper tool.
• Updated the built-in unrar component and most external helper tools to the latest versions.
• Added scripting support for the “move archive/originals” preset options.
• The password manager's auto-locking options are now shown even while the password manager is locked. Of course, you still need to unlock the vault before you can change them. Similarly, the preset configuration indicates whether a password is set in a preset while locked.

Bug Fixes

• The ⌘R keyboard shortcut (extract selected) didn’t work.
• Prevent users from creating folders with invalid names.
• Filenames with semicolons could confuse the BetterZip Finder Extension.
• Fixed a crasher that could occur when opening zip files under certain conditions.
• For solid 7z files the compressed size and index field wouldn’t be displayed.
• Unlocking the password manager from the password panel during compression forgot to enable the OK button.
• When one file was selected and a different file was extracted with a drag-and-drop operation, the progress bar would display the selected file’s size instead of the dragged one’s.
• When adding files in Direct Mode to a rar archive, an access denied error would be displayed.
• Modifying files in a password protected rar file would display an error message.
• Due to new restrictions in macOS, DMG disk image files are no longer supported in the Quick Look preview.

Version 5.0.3 - 2020-09-03 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

Enhancements

• Notifications in the macOS notification center are now clickable and will reveal the processed items in Finder.
• When opening an archive, BetterZip now lists all paths of the archive in the transcript window to give you a textual file listing which can be copied to the clipboard.

Bug Fixes

• Dragging a folder with a numeric path extension into a window’s drop area led to a false error message.
• Recursive extraction of all archives in folders was not working correctly.
• BetterZip now allows extraction of folders in its submenu in Finder’s contextual menu.
• Suppress an error message when an archive has multiple entries for one item.
• Don’t only quarantine apps, but all executables.
• The lock icon in the statusbar wasn’t shown for encrypted zip files.
• The BetterZip Finder extension would interfere with Dropbox's and OneDrive's extension and the sync icons would disappear. I fixed a small bug in BetterZip's extension, but I am not really sure that this was connected to the problem. I was able to reproduce this behavior only rarely after having my Mac run for a long time (weeks) without restarting which makes it hard to pin down. Since the problem also occurs with other extensions, my suspicion is that it's rooted in the extension system itself. I will keep investigating this. If your sync icons continue to disappear with BetterZip 5.0.3, please disable the BetterZip extension for the time being, and if you have any hints, please do let me know.

Version 5.0.2 - 2020-07-08 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

Bug Fixes

• Opening certain types of zip archives could crash BetterZip.
• The volume size setting in presets for the rar format could lead to problems when the size was greater than the actual archive.
• Prevent a crash when extracting files while they were already extracted for the preview.
• The encoding detection for Windows zip files didn’t always work correctly.
• BetterZip no longer trims whitespace characters in the filename patterns in presets.
• Automator, AppleScript: When extracting with a preset, the settings for conflict resolution were ignored and when the preset was set to show the save panel, it stopped the worklflow.
• After a compression Automator action, BetterZip quit too fast for Automator, possibly breaking workflows. I have added a short delay to allow Automator to continue.
• Extracting individual files that had previously been previewed could take longer than expected or even hang completely.
• Sometimes the __MACOSX folder was not hidden regardless of the option in the View menu.

Version 5.0.1 - 2020-06-23 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

Bug Fixes

• Saving an archive with an invalid regex exclusion pattern could crash BetterZip.
• The archive name in the navigation bar was not updated after opening archive.
• DMG disk images couldn’t be created through a preset using the operations queue, e.g., from the BetterZip menu in Finder.
• You could choose to split a disk image, even though the format doesn’t support splitting.
• The Internet Access Policy used by Little Snitch now describes that in order to install the external rar tool, access to rarlabs.com is required.
• The menu command Help > Open BetterZip’s Application Support Folder is now disabled, if that folder doesn’t exist. Currently this folder is only created, if you have BetterZip download and install the external rar tool.
• In the preferences the file association for the Apple Disk Image type couldn’t be deselected.
• The title (filename) of a compression operation was shown incorrectly after it finished.
• The queue window showed an ever growing file size when compressing folders.
• The BetterZip Finder extension didn’t work on external disks.
• Not all archive types on the exclusion list were actually excluded from the Favorites sidebar, leading to an error message when opened. The exclusion list was also ignored in the Finder extension.
• BetterZip wouldn’t display and extract all files from certain larger zip archives.
• “Move originals” preset option didn’t work correctly, if Mac specific files were to be included in the archive, but there were none.
• The QL generator didn’t work for some users on macOS 10.13 and 10.14.

Version 5.0 - 2020-06-17 (for macOS 10.13 and later)

Even Better Integration with macOS

• App (Share) Extension to compress files from inside other apps.
• Share from BetterZip to other apps and cloud services.
• BetterZip submenu in Finder’s contextual menu. This is fantastic: Instead of manually adding each preset to the macOS Services menu (which you still can), you can now access all your presets conveniently from a BetterZip submenu of Finder’s contextual menu.
• Drag and Drop modernized: Drag items from an archive directly to other apps, e.g., Transmit. And when you drag items to the Desktop or Finder windows with icon view, the items will (finally!) be placed where you dropped them.
• Added an Automator action for testing archives.
• All Automator actions now report their progress back.

New Formats

• Create the most important flavors of Apple disk images (DMG files).
• Extract and create archives with the Zstandard format (fast and high compression).
• Extract and create archives with the Brotli format (also fast and high compression).
• Open and extract archives with the XIP format.

Places

BetterZip 5 lets you manage your favorite folders and use them as quick extraction targets and as destinations to move your archives to with one button click. Yes, BetterZip now has a “Move archive” command and toolbar button that lets you move the archive to another folder or to the trash.

More Powerful Delete Commands

• Redesigned “Delete with pattern”: Firstly, BetterZip 5 lets you invoke your favorite patterns from the toolbar or menu. Secondly, you can now review which files are going to be deleted and tweak the list before actually deleting anything.
• BetterZip 5 lets you delete all Mac specific files from an archive with a toolbar button click or menu command. And you can purge all empty folders from your archive.

Additional Preset Options

• Instead of only customizing the filename extension in save presets, you can now specify a pattern to automatically generate filenames using fixed text and variables (like date, time, and username).
• The post-processing script in presets can now be an AppleScript script or even an Automator workflow in addition to shell scripts.
• Upon popular demand, save presets now let you move the original files and folders to the trash or any other folder after successful compression. (Limited to direct mode and queued operation.)

Many More New Features and Enhancements

• Added “Test”, “Open in BetterZip window”, and “Add to archive” to BetterZip button in Finder.
• BetterZip can now keep the external rar commandline utility up-to-date and automatically download and install new versions when they are available.
• Added an option to always or never update edited files inside the archive. While at it, I enhanced the updating of edited archive files in general (fewer alerts, keeping track of open files after saving changes back to an archive).
• For added security, BetterZip will now quarantine apps extracted from archives. You can disable this in the preferences.
• The “Replace File” dialog no longer blocks all other operations and you can now quick-look the two files for a last visual check.
• Better handling of Windows zip archives with non-latin character sets.
  • Change the encoding of open archives without reopening them.
  • BetterZip will now ask for the correct encoding, when it cannot be determined automatically.
• The info pane in the preview sidebar now shows more details. When no files are selected, general archive information is displayed.
• Better visibility when errors occur during queued operations, even if you choose to ignore the errors and continue. And the Reveal button in the queue window will open the transcript window in this case.
• Favorites sidebar: Added options to not show archive count badges and to disable file browsing, for users who use it as quick and simple extraction drop target only.
• Enhanced the logic of opening file packages (most importantly apps) with a double click. BetterZip will now only navigate into the package, if the option “File packages are expandable” in the View menu is toggled on. Otherwise it will either extract and open the package or do whatever you specified in Preferences > Files. Holding down the cmd key will toggle the behavior temporarily.
• When previewing an app in an archive, its icon, version, and copyright string are extracted and displayed.
• BetterZip now lets you save all the settings in the save panel as a preset. Use the new gear button for this. Loading presets has been moved to this button as well.
• When quitting BetterZip while archive operations are running, you are asked whether you really want to quit. This warning can be suppressed.
• Password panels allow you to show the entered password, even when not using the password manager.
• Added a command to completely reset the password manager in case you forgot the master password.
• When you load a preset in the save panel that has a password set, you can now use that password or clear it to enter a new one. You also get the chance to set a new password when doing a “save as…” command with an encrypted archive.
• More accurate progress bars for all operations.
• Added a tab for the configuration of default settings for the BetterZip Quick Look Generator in the preferences window. macOS Catalina rendered all other means of remembering settings for QL generators defunct. The QL generator is still free for all (i.e., no BetterZip license required) and free users can also use the app to set default settings without problems.