Create Archives in Any Major Format on Your Mac

Create Archives in Any Major Format on Your Mac
* {
font-family: Georgia, Cambria, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
}
html, body {
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
h1 {
font-size: 50px;
margin-bottom: 17px;
color: #333;
}
h2 {
font-size: 24px;
line-height: 1.6;
margin: 30px 0 0 0;
margin-bottom: 18px;
margin-top: 33px;
color: #333;
}
h3 {
font-size: 30px;
margin: 10px 0 20px 0;
color: #333;
}
header {
width: 640px;
margin: auto;
}
section {
width: 640px;
margin: auto;
}
section p {
margin-bottom: 27px;
font-size: 20px;
line-height: 1.6;
color: #333;
}
section img {
max-width: 640px;
}
footer {
padding: 0 20px;
margin: 50px 0;
text-align: center;
font-size: 12px;
}
.aspectRatioPlaceholder {
max-width: auto !important;
max-height: auto !important;
}
.aspectRatioPlaceholder-fill {
padding-bottom: 0 !important;
}
header,
section[data-field=subtitle],
section[data-field=description] {
display: none;
}

Create Archives in Any Major Format on Your Mac

Creating Archives on a Mac Should Not Require a Collection of Tools

Create Archives in Any Major Format on Your Mac

Create Archives in Any Major Format on Your Mac### Creating Archives on a Mac Should Not Require a Collection of Tools

ZIP is easy on macOS. Right-click a file or folder, select Compress, and Finder creates a ZIP archive.

That works — until ZIP is not the format you need.

Developers, server administrators and Linux users regularly work with formats such as TAR.GZ, TAR.XZ, ZST or LZ4. Some offer better compression, some are significantly faster, and others are simply required by a particular workflow.

Creating these archives on a Mac usually means opening Terminal and remembering commands such as:

tar -czf archive.tar.gz folder

The command changes with every compression format. Options, extensions and tool availability change too. For occasional use, that is more complexity than the task deserves.

One interface for the major archive formats

packALL provides one straightforward interface for creating archives on macOS.

Add files or folders, select a format and choose where the archive should be saved. There are no commands to remember and no separate utility for every format.

packALL supports:

ZIP
7Z
TAR
GZ and TAR.GZ
BZ2 and TAR.BZ2
XZ and TAR.XZ
ZST and TAR.ZST
LZ4 and TAR.LZ4 ### Compression and archiving are not quite the same

Formats such as ZIP and 7Z can contain multiple files and folders directly.

GZ, BZ2, XZ, ZST and LZ4 are primarily compression formats. They normally compress a single data stream rather than creating a multi-file archive.

That is why Unix-style packages often use two extensions:

TAR collects files and folders into one archive.
GZ, XZ, ZST or another codec compresses that archive. A .tar.zst file is therefore a TAR archive compressed with Zstandard.

packALL handles this distinction in the interface. You can create a directly compressed file or combine multiple items in a compressed TAR archive.

Different formats for different jobs

There is no single best archive format.

ZIP is widely compatible and convenient for sharing files. 7Z often provides stronger compression. GZ and XZ are common in Unix and Linux environments. ZST and LZ4 focus on modern, high-speed compression and decompression.

The right choice depends on where the archive will be used — not on which command happens to be easiest to remember.