Back to the Archi site

Supported formats

This matrix describes Archi 0.5.0 on macOS with the bundled 7-Zip 26.02 engine. Supported means the operation is covered by Archi's automated compatibility corpus. Best effort means the bundled engine may handle the format, but Archi does not make a release guarantee for it yet.

Scroll horizontally to see every operation.

Format Browse Test / extract Create Encryption Modify Multi-volume Comments
ZIPSupportedSupportedSupportedRead and AES-256 createAdd/delete/renameCreate/extractRead/edit UTF-8
7zSupportedSupportedSupportedRead and AES-256 createAdd/delete/renameCreate/extractNo
RAR / RAR5SupportedSupportedNoRead when supported by engineNoEngine-dependentNo
TARSupportedSupportedNoNoNoNoNo
TGZ / TAR.GZSupportedSupportedSupported (.tar.gz)NoNoNoNo
TBZ2 / TAR.BZ2SupportedSupportedNoNoNoNoNo
TXZ / TAR.XZSupportedSupportedSupported (.tar.xz)NoNoNoNo
GZIP streamSupportedSupportedSupportedNoNoNoNo
BZIP2 streamSupportedSupportedNoNoNoNoNo
XZ streamSupportedSupportedSupportedNoNoNoNo
ARSupportedSupportedNoNoNoNoNo
CPIOSupportedSupportedNoNoNoNoNo
TAR.ZSTSupportedSupportedSupported (.tar.zst)NoNoNoNo
Zstandard streamSupportedSupportedSupportedNoNoNoNo
CABBest effortBest effortNoEngine-dependentNoNoNo
ISOBest effortBest effortNoEngine-dependentNoNoNo
LZH / LHABest effortBest effortNoEngine-dependentNoNoNo

Important behavior

  • RAR is read-only. Archi does not create or modify RAR archives.
  • GZIP, XZ, and Zstandard streams accept exactly one regular file. Use a TAR format for folders or multiple items.
  • Modification is available only for single-volume ZIP and 7z archives.
  • ZIP comments are supported; 7z and multi-volume comments are not exposed.
  • Compound archives and single compressed streams may initially appear as one logical inner file, such as archive.tar. Extract that file and open it separately.
  • Content detection uses signature and engine probing; an incorrect extension can produce a non-blocking format warning.
  • Unsupported compression or encryption methods may prevent an otherwise recognized archive from opening.
  • Encrypted ZIP creation uses AES-256, which some older ZIP utilities cannot read.

The internal test evidence is available in the compatibility matrix on GitHub.