QLArchives

QuickLook plugin for archive formats.

Installation

Requires macOS Catalina (10.15) or higher.

brew install --cask relikd/tap/qlarchives
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/QLArchives.app

or download from releases.

Features

• Blazing fast archive listings (native UI)
• No (external) dependencies
• macOS 10.15+
• Small app size (2 MB)
• Customize sort order
• Filter by filetype
• Resolve symlinks
• Archive support for: .7z, .apk, .cab, .cdr, .cpio, .deb, .epub, .ipsw, .iso, .jar, .lha, .pkg, .rar, .rpm, .tar, .tar.bz2, .tar.gz, .tar.lz, .tar.xz, .tbz, .tbz2, .tgz, .tlz, .txz, .war, .xar, .xip, .zip, .zipx

Within the companion app

• Search for files
• Extract individual files (drag & drop)
• Extract all files (action button)

Default settings

Note: QuickLook preview and companion app use separate settings. You may have to configure both.

What it does

QLArchives uses libarchive to process most common archive formats. Notably, the app uses the libarchive library already bundled with macOS.

MacOS libarchive versions

• macOS 10.13.2: libarchive 2.8.3 (NO SUPPORT)
• macOS 10.14.6: libarchive 2.8.3 (NO SUPPORT)
• macOS 10.15.7: libarchive 3.3.2 (NOT: pkg, xar, xip)
• macOS 11.7.8: libarchive 3.3.2 (NOT: pkg, xar, xip)
• macOS 12.6.1: libarchive 3.5.1
• macOS 13.6.1: libarchive 3.5.3
• macOS 14.6.1: libarchive 3.5.3
• macOS 15.6.1: libarchive 3.7.4
• macOS 26.3.1: libarchive 3.7.4

Limitations

For reasons unknown, libarchive could also process .lrz, .lz4, .zst but macOS throws an error.

ERROR: Can't initialize filter; unable to run program "lrzip -d -q"
ERROR: Can't initialize filter; unable to run program "lz4 -d -q"
ERROR: Can't initialize filter; unable to run program "zstd -d -qq"