How to open and extract RAR files on Mac

Here's everything you need to know about RAR files and how to extract the contents of RAR files on Mac.

What are RAR files?

RAR files are similar to ZIP files. Both are file formats that store multiple files compressed into one. This way, you only need to upload that one compressed file and the recipient only needs to download it instead of many individual files.

RAR is the abbreviation for Roshal ARchive, named after the Russian software engineer who created it. The RAR format was created to overcome some of the flaws in the ZIP format and gives users a number of benefits, including: smaller file size, easier splitting of files into parts and error recovery.

How to open and extract RAR files on Mac

Mac systems do not have their own tools to handle this file format. However, you can easily use a third-party app to open RAR files on Mac.

Open RAR files with Keka

Keka is a compression and decompression tool available on the Mac App Store and works as a standalone installation. Once installed, all you have to do is double-click on the RAR file to extract it or right-click on a file, then select Open.

Note, Keka can create its own compressed files but does not support the RAR format. You can only compress files in ZIP, 7-Zip, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2 formats.

• Download Keka for Mac

Use unRAR on Mac Terminal

To extract RAR files using Terminal, you need to install Homebrew - an "all in one" tool to install other tools.

For example, using Homebrew, you can install RAR file compression software with one command:

brew install unrar

You must enter the above command into Terminal. You can access it by opening Spotlight (use the keyboard shortcut Cmd + Spacebar), typing terminal , and opening Terminal.app .

If you receive a message UnRAR needs to be created from the following source:

First, you must install the Xcode command line tools with the command:

xcode-select --install

Once UnRAR is installed, you can extract the RAR file by navigating to it in Terminal and entering the command:

unrar x example_file.rar

Use The Unarchiver to extract RAR files

The Unarchiver is a free RAR file decompression software on macOS. You can use it to open any RAR archive with one click. Like Keka, The Unarchiver does not allow you to view the content inside files before extracting them. However, this tool has many customization options so you can extract them the way you want.

Another useful feature is that it supports non-Latin characters for archive names. Thanks to that, you can extract RAR files with foreign names.

The Unarchiver supports many different compressed file formats, including ZIP, 7Z, GZIP, CAB…

• Download The Unarchiver

Above are some ways to open RAR files on Mac . Hope the article is useful to you.