Preview before you extract — why full unpack is the wrong default
A multi-gigabyte archive arrives. You need three files. Archive Utility expands everything into the same folder and leaves you hunting through the rest.
The inspect-first path
Better UnArchiver treats preview as the first step:
- Open the archive and browse the tree.
- Search by name when the pack is deep.
- Select only the entries you need, confirm the destination, then extract.
That matters for design packs, SDK dumps, and Windows ZIPs whose filenames need an encoding pass (GBK, Big5, Shift-JIS, EUC-KR) before anything sensible shows up.
Formats and honesty
RAR is extraction-only in the current release. ZIP and 7z can be created with AES-256 when you need a password on the archive itself. Salvage writes readable entries into a new archive; it does not rewrite the damaged original.
Archive contents are processed on your Mac by default. Only support attachments you explicitly submit leave the machine.