Archives

Goblin opens archives in a window of their own. You see the files inside, preview them and take out the ones you want, without unpacking the whole thing first. It can also make new archives. Nothing here deletes your files: extracting always goes into a new folder, and making an archive never touches the originals.

Open an archive#

Use whichever is closest:

• From Finder: right-click the archive and choose Open in Goblin. This needs the Finder commands.
• From the Tools tab: in the main window, click Tools, find the Archives card, click Open…, choose one or more archives and click Open.
• By double-clicking: if you've made Goblin the app for archives (see below).

When it worked, a window opens with the files inside. The path bar above the list shows where you are. Use Back, Forward and Up in the toolbar (or ⌘[, ⌘] and ⌘↑) to move around. Type in Search to look through the whole archive. Select a file and press the space bar, or choose Quick Look from its right-click menu, to preview it.

What opens#

Goblin opens zip, 7z, rar (including encrypted and multi-part sets), tar, and tar files compressed with gzip, bzip2, xz or zstd, plus single compressed files such as gz, bz2, xz and zst. It also opens cab, iso, xar, cpio, deb, rpm, wim, vhd and several more, and split sets named .001, .z01 or .part1.rar. A zip inside a 7z (or any archive inside another) opens in place, and the path bar shows where you are.

Goblin decides by the file's name first, then by what is really inside, so a zip that was renamed still opens.

Take files out#

To pull out only some files:

1. Open the archive.
2. Drag the files from the window to a Finder window or your desktop. Or select them and click Extract Selected in the toolbar.
3. When it worked, the files appear where you dropped them, or in a new folder beside the archive.

To unpack everything, click Extract All in the toolbar. To pick the destination yourself, click Extract To….

• Extract All and Extract Selected make a folder named after the archive beside it. If the name is taken, Goblin adds a number instead of replacing anything.
• If you extract to a folder that already holds files with the same names, Goblin asks whether to Keep Both, Replace or Skip.
• Only what you drag is extracted, and only when you drop it.
• Files extracted from a downloaded archive keep macOS's "downloaded from the internet" mark, so Gatekeeper still checks apps before they run.
• Cancel during a large extraction leaves nothing half-finished behind.

From Finder, you don't need to open the window: right-click an archive and choose Extract Here (a folder beside it) or Extract to Folder… (you pick). Dropping archives on the Tools tab's Archives card extracts them beside themselves.

Make an archive#

1. In Finder, right-click the file or folder (or select several) and choose Compress with Goblin…. You can also drop files on the Archives card on the Tools tab; the sheet opens when what you drop isn't an archive.
2. In the Compress sheet, choose a Format: zip, 7z, tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2, tar.xz, or a single-file gz, bz2 or xz.
3. Set Compression. For a zip or 7z, you can type a Password; for a 7z you can also tick Encrypt file names.
4. Under Options, tick Leave out Mac files to skip .DS_Store, __MACOSX and ._ files (helpful for people on Windows or Linux), or Split into parts of a size in MB.
5. Check Save as and the folder beside it. Click Change… to pick another folder.
6. Click Compress.

To keep these choices, open the Presets menu in the sheet and choose Save Current Settings…; the same menu applies or deletes a saved preset. A password is never saved.

Open a locked archive#

When an archive is locked, Goblin asks for the password.

1. Type the password in the Password box.
2. Tick Remember in Keychain if you want Goblin to remember it for that archive.
3. Click OK. A wrong password says so and asks again.

If you skip the password, the archive opens with a banner, "Some items are password protected", and an Enter Password… button. Goblin lists which files are encrypted. Some archives hide the file names too, so Goblin has to ask before it can show anything at all.

With Remember in Keychain, Goblin saves the password in your Keychain for that archive and tries it first next time. Goblin never writes passwords to its logs, and it has no password list of its own: the Keychain is the only place a remembered password lives. Leave the box unticked and nothing is saved.

Editing an archive#

Zip, 7z and tar archives can be changed in place.

• Add files: drop files from Finder onto the list, or click Add (or press ⇧⌘A) and choose them.
• Make a folder: click New Folder (⇧⌘N).
• Rename: right-click an entry and choose Rename.
• Delete: select entries and click Delete (⌘⌫), or right-click and choose Delete…. Goblin asks first.
• Open With: right-click an entry and choose Open With to open a temporary copy in another app. When you save there, a banner offers Update Archive; Not Now leaves the archive alone. If you close the window first, Goblin asks "Update the archive with your changes?".

Rar archives, disk images (iso, dmg) and the other formats Goblin reads but cannot rewrite are read-only. So are archives inside another archive and multi-part sets. Their edit controls are switched off, and the tooltip on each says why. You can still open them, preview files, and extract.

Where the commands are#

In Finder. Right-click an archive for Open in Goblin, Extract Here and Extract to Folder…. Right-click any file or folder for Compress with Goblin….

Turn on the Finder commands#

These need Goblin's Finder extension.

1. Open System Settings›General›Login Items & Extensions.
2. Under Added Extensions, open the Finder entry.
3. Turn on Goblin.

When it worked, the commands above appear in Finder's right-click menu. Goblin's own Settings›Tools›Archives card repeats these steps.

On the Tools tab. The Archives card has Open…. Drop an archive on it and it extracts beside itself; drop other files and the Compress sheet opens.

From the menu bar. Drag archives onto Goblin’s icon or Drop on Goblin. The menu offers Open to browse, Extract to choose a destination, and Archive to package the selection in a new archive. Folders and mixed file types offer Archive. Drop onto an action or choose it after releasing the files on the target. See Drop files on Goblin.

In the Clipbar. Select text that holds a file path and the bar can offer Extract (when the path is an archive), Open Archive (when the selection holds exactly one archive) and Compress (for any existing file or folder). They are available in Settings › Clipbar when you add a built-in action, and they are off in the standard bar.

Ask the Goblin. "Open the archive on my Finder selection", "extract this archive here", "compress my Finder selection" "cancel the extraction" and "show me the Archives page" all work. The Goblin can also list what is inside an archive, extract chosen items into a new folder and open one item in an app. Anything that changes the archive file itself (adding files, renaming, a new folder, deleting items, or putting an edited copy back) opens a review in Goblin that says exactly what will change, and nothing happens until you confirm it. Archives that can only be read, such as rar and disk images, are refused with a plain sentence. See Siri and Goblin phrases.

Make Goblin the app for archives#

1. Open Settings›Tools.
2. In the Archives card, turn on Open archives with Goblin.

Double-clicking a zip, 7z, rar, tar or similar file now opens it in Goblin. To go back, turn the switch off: Archive Utility opens them again. Goblin never changes this by itself. Disk images and installers are never moved, so a double-click still mounts a dmg or runs a pkg as before. If macOS won't change some of the types, a line under the switch says how many.

When you ask the Goblin to turn the switch on or off, it opens a review first and changes nothing until you confirm there, because it changes which app macOS uses for your archives.