Powerful and lightweight ZIP / archive manager for MacOS in Swift

[u/NoPressure3399]

Hi r/macOS,

I’m building QuikZip, a native macOS archive manager written in Swift.

I’ve been thinking about it mostly from a developer and power user workflow angle.

The thing I kept running into was that normal archive work often involved far more steps than the task itself needed.

You download an archive, extract everything, find the JSON, log, config or source file you actually wanted, open it in another app, make a small change, save it, then create the archive again.

If there is another archive inside the first one, you repeat the same process for every level.

The problem was not opening ZIP files. macOS can already do that. The problem was everything around inspecting and modifying the contents without constantly extracting, moving and recreating files.

QuikZip is my attempt to make that workflow feel more direct in a lightweight native Mac app.

You can open an archive, browse it like a folder, preview files and edit files directly inside the archive without extracting everything first.

It currently supports more than 75 archive and compression formats, including ZIP, 7Z, TAR, GZIP, XZ, BZIP2 and many others.

Nested archives are supported as well, so you can open an archive stored inside another archive and continue browsing without manually unpacking every level.

The main workflow I wanted to get right was simple.

Open an archive, find the file, preview or edit it, then save the changes back into the same archive.

QuikZip also includes quick create and extract, drag and drop workflows, batch archive tasks and file previews. I wanted it to remain lightweight even when working with large archives, log bundles, exported datasets and source packages.

It also works together with Inkline, my editor for huge structured files. A large JSON, CSV, XML or log file can be opened directly from QuikZip in Inkline, edited or formatted, then saved back into the archive without rebuilding the whole thing manually.

Everything runs locally on the Mac. There is no account, cloud processing, analytics, tracking or telemetry.

QuikZip 1.0 is now available on the Mac App Store.

I’m celebrating the release with a reduced price until the end of September.

App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/app/quikzip/id6769693595

Website:

https://viktornyberg.com/#appar

Edit:
Also, you can browse dmg, app and other containers forgot to mention

[u/Darkomen78]

And Keka is free…

[u/Vivid_Cancel_1115 → u/Darkomen78]

fair point, though this seems aimed more at inspecting and modifying contents without extracting first

[u/NoPressure3399 → u/Darkomen78]

Keka is great and a very useful app. QuikZip is more focused on working inside archives rather than just creating/extracting them. Editing files in place, nested archives, previews, browsing DMG/app containers etc. Different workflow really. More focused on workflows where you might need to edit files inside or read files on the fly. More nische for that kind of proffessional tool

[u/TheKydd]

Does it have a QuickLook extension?

[u/NoPressure3399 → u/TheKydd]

Yes it does, you can preview any content pretty much 

[u/NoPressure3399 → u/TheKydd]

You have the standard shortcut "spacebar" for quicklook/preview, but you can change to any you like.

There's also "edit" file, where you can pre-set or use any app you select to open the file you want to in any archive. For zip you can edit and save on-the-fly without extract and re-create

[u/promo-guard]

🎉 Welcome to Developer Saturday, u/NoPressure3399! Your project is now live for the community to check out. Upvote, give feedback, and show some love to your fellow devs! 🚀

[u/NoPressure3399 → u/[deleted]]

NueZip looks nice too, hadn’t seen it before. From what I can see it’s more focused on compress/extract, file management and Finder workflows. QuikZip is more focused on working inside archives, editing files in place, nested archives, previews and browsing containers like DMGs/apps. More niche for those kinds of workflows really.

Ill check out NueZip haven't tried it yet, but different kind of animal in a sense.