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Keka

By aone (Jorge García Armero) · since 2008 · Donationware (paid on App Store) · official site →

Overview

Keka is the de facto archiver for macOS. It is a friendly Mac-native wrapper around the same battle-tested xz, libarchive, and unar libraries that power the command line, with a beautiful dock-icon UI: drag a folder onto Keka and you get a compressed archive; drag an archive onto Keka and you get an extracted folder.

Best for

macOS users who want an alternative to the bare Archive Utility. Creating 7z, tar.xz, and tar.zst on a Mac. Strong AES-256 encryption.

Limitations

macOS-only. Cannot create RAR archives.

Supported formats — create

Keka can create the following archive formats:

7zZIPTARGZIPBZIP2XZLZIPZSTDBROTLILZ4LZHDMGISOWIM

Supported formats — extract

Keka can extract:

7zZIPRAR (RAR5)TARGZIPBZIP2XZLZIPZSTDBROTLILZ4LZHDMGISOCABEXE (NSIS)PAXCPIO

Installation

Where to download

The official download is at https://www.keka.io/. Avoid third-party download sites — they often bundle adware or worse with otherwise legitimate archivers.

Operating systems supported

macOS

How to use Keka

Extracting an archive

  1. Locate the archive in your file manager (or terminal).
  2. Right-click and choose the Keka entry, or run the equivalent CLI command.
  3. Pick a destination folder.
  4. Wait for extraction to complete — speed depends on archive size and chosen algorithm.

Creating an archive

  1. Select the files or folders you want to bundle.
  2. Open Keka and choose Add (or drag the selection onto its window/dock icon).
  3. Pick a target format from the supported list above.
  4. Optionally set a password — prefer AES-256 over legacy algorithms.
  5. Click OK and wait for compression to complete.

Alternatives

If Keka is not the right fit, consider these alternatives covered in our software directory: