How to open RAR files on macOS easily

What is a RAR Mac file extension?

RAR stands for Roshal Archive Compressed file and is named after its Russian-born creator Eugene Roshal. Like other archives, RAR contains one or more files or folders. It has become popular for sharing and downloading various types of files because it compresses the contents of a folder to reduce the file size.

Compressing files speeds up downloads and makes file sharing easier. Some RAR files have passwords or are encrypted to protect the files inside. You can usually compress almost any type of file, including images, documents, videos, and software.The main advantage of this format is to save space, since the information is in a "packed" form. Let's list the other advantages of the RAR format:

• the maximum size of the archive, as well as the files in it, is practically unlimited;
• ability to create a multivolume archive (consisting of several parts);
• password protection of the contents of the archive is provided;
• support for error correction.

However, RAR is a proprietary archive format and to open rar on Mac you will need a third-party application.

What are the reasons to use RAR vs ZIP files?

The main reason people use RAR for Mac and other computers is the compression ratio. In general, the RAR format can compress a file much better than when it is done using ZIP format. It means that RAR uses a compression algorithm that is significantly better and more efficient than the DEFLATE compression method used in ZIP. RAR also archives files with smaller sizes compared to ZIP archives, which makes RAR a better alternative than ZIP.

Another nice thing about RAR files is that they can be split into multiple parts. What does it mean? Well, you can split a large file into two or more different RAR files. Besides that, RAR can store NTFS file system attributes (such as streams, full acl permissions, change / access / etc. times) and thus makes it a good full backup tool with decent compression capability. ZIP cannot store any of these other than plain old DOS attributes (read-only, hidden, system).

In addition, RAR supports reliable archiving, which improves the compression ratio if there are many small files in the archive. There are also data redundancy and error correction methods that you can use to repair corrupted Mac RAR archives (for example, corrupted due to transmission errors or bad sectors). Still there is a so-called “problem” with opening.rar files on Mac. Namely, you need to use third-party RAR opener Mac tools.

Conclusion

MacOS users sooner or later ask themselves the question of finding and choosing the best archiver for their computer. It is with the help of such programs that various documents in the formats RAR, 7Z, GZIP, etc. are unpacked. So in order to work easily and not create problems for yourself because of the archiver, you need to choose it correctly.In this article we have gathered useful information about .rar format, namely how to open .rar on Mac computers and what are the most convenient RAR file Mac solutions.