Look inside the archive before you pull anything out
A .zip arrives. You want one file out of it - not the whole thing, and certainly not on a server you did not pick. The habit most of us have is to hand the archive to an online unzip page, wait, and hope the site is careful with it.
The Unzip files tab of the File Studio in OnePassApps takes a narrower route: it opens the archive in your tab, lists what is inside, lets you pick which entries you actually want, and extracts only those. The archive never gets uploaded.
Open it here: the File Studio
The three steps the tab gives you
The File Studio page opens with the plain description of the whole tool: "Create archives, inspect local ZIP files, compare hashes, rename copies and join split parts. Your files stay in this tab."
Its tabs are ZIP files, Unzip files, Batch rename, File hash, Find duplicates, Split file and Join parts. The Unzip tab is laid out as three numbered steps:
01 Source - the archive goes here. The drop area says "Drop a ZIP to look inside, or browse", and the limit line under it is the useful part: "One .zip up to 100 MiB · damaged, encrypted and unsafe archives are rejected".
02 Selection - "Pick the files to extract once the archive has been checked." You are not extracting everything by default; you choose.
03 Result - "Extracted copies are listed on the stage, each with its own download."
The action button is literally "Extract selected files", and the page says "Nothing leaves this tab."
What the archive preview shows
The interesting part for a developer is the step between dropping the file and getting output: the archive gets checked and listed before anything is written.
I built a small ZIP locally - two real text files, quarterly-notes.txt (29 B) and totals.csv (31 B) - and dropped it on the stage. The panel reported:
-
probe-unzip.zip- ZIP · 296 B - 296 B · 2 entries
- Archive preview · 2 entries
-
quarterly-notes.txt- 29 B -
totals.csv- 31 B - status line: "Archive checked. Select the files to extract."
So the file size, the entry count and the per-entry sizes are all known before extraction. There is also Select all, Clear selection and Clear archive next to the preview, so you can take one entry, take several, or take the lot without re-dropping the file.
The Selection step then summarises the selection in two numbers - Selected: 2 of 2 files and Extracted size: 60 B - which is the size of what you are about to get out, not the size of the archive.
Extraction, run for real
With both entries selected, Extract selected files produced a Result panel that read:
- Ready
- "Verified selected files are ready to download. Nothing was executed."
- Files 2, Size 60 B
- Extracted in 0.5 s
- "2 copies extracted and checked. Download each one, or all at once."
Each extracted copy gets its own download, and there is a Download all button when you do want the set. "Extract again" re-runs it from the same archive.
Why the checks are the point
Three phrases in that panel carry most of the weight.
"damaged, encrypted and unsafe archives are rejected" - an archive that asks for a password is turned away rather than half-processed, and so is one the browser flags as damaged or unsafe. If your ZIP is password-protected, this tab is not the tool for it.
"Nothing was executed" - extracting an archive is not running it. The result is inert files on a stage with download buttons. Anything in the archive that was built to be opened by something else stays a file.
"Verified selected files" and "2 copies extracted and checked" - the extraction is checked before you are handed the copies.
None of this is a substitute for treating an archive from someone else as untrusted input. It is a narrower promise than "we unzipped it for you": the archive is read locally, the entries are listed before extraction, and the ones you pick are the only ones that come out.
The honest limits
- One archive at a time, up to 100 MiB. The drop hint is explicit: "One .zip up to 100 MiB".
- Password-protected archives are rejected, along with damaged and unsafe ones.
- The stage is the working copy. The page says "Processing stays in this browser." Export what you need before you close the tab.
- It is a ZIP tool. Other formats are a different job - the same studio's ZIP files tab goes the other way and builds archives.
Where the work happens
I work on OnePassApps, full disclosure. The File Studio is where this lives, and the work happens in the tab: "Nothing leaves this tab." and "Processing stays in this browser."
The Standard plan is free right now during a promotional period: $0 / month, 100,000 credits every 30 days, no end date set, no card required, and no automatic paid subscription.
The short version
Drop a .zip, read the entry list and the per-entry sizes, pick the files you want, and extract only those. The archive is read in your browser tab and never uploaded.
Disclosure: I work on OnePassApps. The behaviour above is what I could verify today, read off the live File Studio page and from an extraction I ran myself with a real archive. Limits may change. How the browser-local tools work in general is written up in the app's own guides: app.onepassapps.com/guides.
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