TriedIT - Software and Hardware News and Reviews

You download an archive to your Apple computer, maybe it’s a .zip file or a .tar.gz or .sit. You double-click on it to open it up and the built-in helper app opens up and extracts the files to a folder, usually your desktop. Or, in the case of a .sit file, if you have StuffIt installed that will open.

If you’re like me, you wish it handled .sit archives so you didn’t have to use the pretty lame StuffIt expander application. I call it lame because it’s not included by default, and why should anyone in 2007 have to sign up to download an unarchiving application?

Cue The Unarchiver, a free open source application for Mac OS X that is a much improved utility for unarchiving that replaces the built-in OS X helper application. I have installed it on my MacBook Pro and it is definitely an improvement over the included utility. Check it out.