Zipping files has been a tradition since the glory days of pkunzip on DOS systems, at least that’s as far as I can remember. The very act of taking a file, and making it smaller without any loss in quality is something very appealing.

So what are we looking for then? An unarchiving app should be as transparent to the user as possible. It should support a wide variety of file formats. When it comes to creating archives, the app should allow you to create password protected DMGs (in addition to PC-compatible zip/rars), and directly allow you to email that file to a contact. Now I know that some of these apps took it to the extreme and have turned into bloatware that no one wants to touch, but there are others that have subtle features that make you actually choose them over another.

If you’re on the lookout for a good unzipping application, this roundup pretty much describes what’s out there in the Mac market right now.

The Unarchiver

Let’s start with the simple one. If you’re thoroughly satisfied with the way the built in BOM unarchiving tool works on the Mac, but just need a few more formats to boot, the Unarchiver will serve you well. Once installed, all you have to do is double click any of the supported formats (most of them) and it will unzip your file for you.

In the preferences you can set it to default to any particular file formats, and ask for a folder while unarchiving. What it does not do however, is creating an archive. Mac OS X does feature a “compress items” option, but it is known to cause issues when unzipping on a PC. Another issue I noticed was that it had problems unarchiving certain rar’ed files, while the rest of them unrar’ed them just fine. The Unarchiver is a free app and will serve you well for basic usage.

iArchiver

A more robust app, iArchiver allows you to create and extract archives in almost all of the formats out there. You can use it along with Finder, in that it will extract upon double click, or drag an archive into the application window. You could drop in the first file in an archive series, and it will automatically load the rest of them.

iArchiver allows you to create archives in a lot of formats, including DMG, zip, rar, and the highly compressed 7z. You can then set an encryption password on it. After this you can use the straightforward ‘create archive’ method, or just drag the large icon onto your desktop, Finder, or Mail app icon to create the archive on the fly. There’s also an option to convert one type of archive into another. iArchiver costs $26 and it didn’t fail any of the archives I threw at it.

TastyUnzip

This one’s an odd ball. TastyUnzip doesn’t really do much, other than replace the zipped file, with a folder containing the unzipped file. It will also move the zipped file to the trash. The whole thing gives you an illusion that it converted the zipped file into a folder. There’s no support for any other file formats, nor does it have any other special magic tricks. They’re charging $8 for it.

BetterZip

The application looks very much like WinRAR on the PC, only much cleaner and nicer. You can unarchive files just by double clicking them in Finder, or dropping them in the BetterZip window. While doing so you can add and delete files from any archive, which is nice if you’re backing up to the same archive.

To create an archive you simply dump the files in the window, and click Save. Unfortunately, BetterZip doesn’t feature a DMG file creation, instead choosing to stay with Zip/RAR and the like. BetterZip can also clean up your folders of any ‘Mac’ files like .DS_store files so that your archives are clean.

Overall, the app feels a little too windowsy while not offering a whole lot more in terms of features. BetterZip costs $20, and works well for what it’s worth.

There’s also the free BetterZip Quick Look plugin, which will allow you to quick look any archive format supported by BetterZip, whether or not you have the app installed. A must have for any Mac user.

UnrarX

I’ve seen a lot of recommendations for UnRarX. Checking out the app, I can tell you the user interface of the application is very bland, almost command prompt like. You drop files into the window or dock icon (no Finder integration), after which it will extract the file to whatever directory you’ve set it to. The app supports only RAR files, so that will leave you wanting more.

Finder integration, and the ability to create archives is something that’s missing in this app, so I’m going to pass. It’s free however, and worked on all the archives I threw at it.

Compress Files

Here’s an app that does the opposite of what the others have been doing. It compresses files, but doesn’t have an unarchiver. The interface features three tabs for ‘compress’, ‘email’, and ‘archive’. Compress will zip/dmg/rar/etc any file(s) you drop into the window and drop the file wherever those files you dropped in came from.

What it doesn’t allow you to do, is drop multiple files one at a time, and then compress the file. If you drop it in the Email tab, it creates an archived file as well as launches Mail. This seems wasteful, considering a checkbox in the main window would have sufficed. The last tab will compress any file you drop in and store it in the Archived folder in your home directory. Take note that you have to manually create this folder there (or choose another folder) failing which it will throw up an error message.

At $20 I think Compress Files is a waste of money, consider there’s much better apps out there that you can use.

Stuffit

The grand daddy of archiving on the Mac, Stuffit has evolved into something we have all come to know as ‘bloatware’. There’s only so much you can do with archiving, so Stuffit had to go and add a whole bunch of features so that they could release new versions. They are already at version 13.

Apart from unarchiving most of the file formats, Stuffit allows you to create Stuffit, Zip and TAR files. You can also edit and change files within those archives using the stuffit browser. If you have a bunch of images in there, Stuffit will show them in a thumbnail grid.

Stuffit also features an FTP client so you can archive your files directly to an FTP server or your MobileMe iDisk. The deluxe version has some extra features that I don’t think I’d ever be able to use. Stuffit claims they can compress Jpegs and Mp3s by upto some percentage, but I don’t think anyone nowadays is concerned about saving a few bytes here and there.

Using a screenshot from Flickr because I didn’t want to torture myself again

Coming in at $79 for the deluxe version, $49 for the standard version (which has most of the features) and ‘free’ for the expander, Stuffit is not everyone’s cup of tea. The integration of the FTP is good, but it’s still nothing compared to a dedicated FTP client. The expander itself is buggy, and reports millions of hours remaining even for a small archive, and the whole process reminds you of Vista’s transfer timer. Besides, the trial version is just too difficult to get to!

Zipping it up

Ask me to choose an archiving tool and I’d say iArchiver. It’s lean, has finder integration and can create password protected archives with a few clicks. It has yet to fail unarchiving any file I’ve thrown at it.

And just so you don’t feel left out, I’ve got 5 licenses of iArchiver for giveaway! 2 licenses for commenters, and 3 going out if you tweet about this post. Standard giveaway rules apply.