Exploring and Selective Extraction

Exploring Without Extracting

With Archiva you don’t need to decompress a huge archive to reach a single document:

• Expandable folders: open and close folders with the disclosure triangle or the → / ← keys. ⌥-click the triangle to expand or collapse a whole branch.
• Expand or collapse all: ⌥ ⌘ → and ⌥ ⌘ ← show or fold the entire structure.
• Sorting: by name, size, modification date or kind, ascending or descending; folders stay on top (configurable in Settings).
• Search: the search field (⌘ F) instantly filters even tens of thousands of entries.
• Navigation: Back (⌘ [), Forward (⌘ ]), Enclosing Folder (⌘ ↑) and Archive Top Level (⇧ ⌘ H); from the Go menu you can also show only password-protected items.

Preview

When you select a file, the info panel shows its preview:

• images, PDF documents, text and source code are read directly in memory (with libarchive or 7zz e -so), without writing temporary files to disk;
• other types (documents, video, audio, fonts) go through Quick Look, which only opens real files: Archiva writes a copy to a private temporary folder and deletes it when the preview is no longer needed.

Press Space or ⌘ Y to open the macOS Quick Look panel, always on a temporary copy. The size limit for images and PDFs is set in Settings (from 10 to 250 MB).

Compact View

⌥ ⌘ L switches from the full view to a small window, with the list in rows and the essential commands. Creating and converting have their compact version too.

Inspecting Apps and Packages (BundleInspector)

When an archive contains a Mac app (.app), an extension (.appex), a plug-in, a framework or an installer package (.pkg), Archiva reads Info.plist, icons and Mach-O headers in memory and shows in the info panel:

• Identity and version: icon, version, build, bundle ID, category and minimum macOS version required.
• Architectures: whether the binary is for Apple Silicon (arm64), Intel (x86_64) or universal.
• Signing: presence of the code signature (_CodeSignature), the notarization ticket and the Mac App Store receipt (_MASReceipt).
• Installer packages (.pkg): from the XAR index, without extracting anything, title, version, included components, installed size, install location, scripts and signature.

Drag-and-Drop Extraction

Archiva uses macOS Transferable with FileRepresentation:

1. Select one or more files in the list (or drag the large icon from the info panel).
2. Drag them to a Finder folder or the Desktop.
3. Extraction happens only when you drop:
   • for protected files, Archiva asks for the password on drop (and asks again if it’s wrong);
   • a banner shows extraction progress;
   • extracted files never overwrite files with the same name already there.

Extraction on Command (⌘ E and ⇧ ⌘ E)

From the toolbar, the File menu or the context menu:

• Extract Selection… (⌘ E): extracts only the selected items.
• Extract All… (⇧ ⌘ E): extracts the whole archive.
• Folders: if the archive has a single item at its root it’s extracted directly, otherwise Archiva creates a folder named after the archive (in Settings you can ask for that folder every time).
• Destination: in Settings choose whether to ask every time, extract next to the archive or always use a chosen folder, and whether to show the result in the Finder afterwards.
• Safety: extraction blocks paths that would escape the destination folder (.., symbolic links); on error or cancellation partial files are removed.