UnRarX

Although Windows and Mac OS X have their own archive formats, you can still extract RAR or ZIP archives on Mac without too much effort, especially if you have the right tools. One of the best solutions for extracting a RAR archive's contents is UnRarX, due to its straightforward functionality and to its clean and simple design. The application is lightweight and it works quite fast, but its simplicity is the feature you will appreciate the most.

The largest part of the user interface consists of an events log, which displays various details, like test results or progress information when extracting an archive's contents. You can load archives, test their integrity and extract their contents by clicking a series of options, located on a toolbar, where you can also choose a destination folder in a drop menu. Also, if an archive is password-protected, you may click another option, in the same area, to bring up an input field for the password.

The extraction process will start as soon as you click the appropriate option. Alternatively, you can simply drag and drop an archive over the user interface. Thus, the application will start extracting immediately, to the selected folder, without asking for any user input. Furthermore, you can make a few behavior tweaks, like setting the application to overwrite existing files by default, to assume "Yes" to all queries, to keep broken extracted files and others.

By default, all options are displayed only as text, but you can switch to icons, with or without text, by right clicking the toolbar and selecting the corresponding options. It is also possible to bring up a toolbar customization panel, on which you can add or remove various icons and other elements.