Support

Questions, problems or ideas for Arcana are welcome.

Opening archives

• Double-click an archive in Finder, drop it on Arcana's icon in the Dock or on the welcome window, or choose File ▸ Open….
• To open archives in Arcana when you double-click them, choose Arcana ▸ Settings… and check the kinds of archives it should open. macOS asks you to confirm each change.
• For an archive with an encrypted list of files, Arcana asks for the password before it can show anything.
• For an archive split into several files (.7z.001, .part1.rar, .z01…), open the first part. Arcana asks for access to the folder the other parts are in, since the macOS sandbox only lets it read the file you opened.

Extracting

• Drag items from the window to Finder, or anywhere else that takes files.
• Or select items and click Extract (⌘E); with nothing selected, everything is extracted. Below the folder panel, choose whether the items go into a new folder named like the archive.
• Double-click a file to open it in the app that opens it. It opens as a copy: changes to it don't go back into the archive.

Making archives

• In Finder, select files and folders, Control-click them and choose Services ▸ Compress with Arcana…. Or choose File ▸ Compress Files… in Arcana.
• Choose where to save the archive and whether it's a zip or a 7z archive. Arcana suggests a place next to the files and a name like Finder's; the macOS sandbox lets it write only where you choose.
• Choose how hard to compress: None (Store) is quickest and suits photos and videos, which are compressed already; Maximum makes the smallest archives, slowly.
• “Leave out hidden files” skips files and folders whose names start with a dot, such as .git. Finder's .DS_Store files are always left out.
• With several items selected, “Make an archive of each item” makes one archive per item, named after it. Arcana then asks you to allow the folder once, since it saves more than one file there.
• Check “Encrypt with a password” to protect it. For 7z archives, the file names can be hidden too.
• If the service is missing from the menu, turn it on in System Settings ▸ Keyboard ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts ▸ Services ▸ Files and Folders.

Quick Look

• Select items and press Space to preview them; the arrow keys move through the list, and Space or Esc closes the preview.
• In Finder, press Space on an archive to see what it holds. If Finder doesn't show that preview, check that Arcana is turned on in System Settings ▸ General ▸ Login Items & Extensions ▸ Quick Look.

Changing archives

• 7z, zip, tar and wim archives in a single file can be changed. Other formats, such as RAR, open read-only.
• To add items, drop files and folders on the window, or on a folder in it. Items with the same names are replaced after Arcana asks.
• To delete items, select them and choose Edit ▸ Delete (⌘⌫). This can't be undone.
• To protect an archive, choose File ▸ Set Password…. Encrypting takes as much free disk space as the archive's contents need unpacked, since everything is packed again.
• Arcana writes the changed archive to a new file first and replaces the original only when everything worked, so an error or a Stop leaves the archive as it was.

Common problems

• “The password is incorrect.” Passwords are case-sensitive. An archive may also use different passwords for different items.
• Delete is dimmed, or dropped files aren't added. The archive can't be changed: its format is read-only in Arcana (such as RAR), or it is split, compressed as a whole (such as .tar.gz) or inside another archive. Extract what you need and make a new archive.
• Set Password… is dimmed. Only 7z and zip archives can be encrypted.
• Someone can't open a zip file you protected. Some unzip tools can't open zip files encrypted with AES-256. Set the password again and choose ZipCrypto, which more apps understand, but which is much weaker.
• Names look garbled. For archives with names in an old code page, choose the right one in View ▸ Text Encoding of Names.