Support
Questions, problems or ideas for Arcana are welcome.
Write to support@occlusion.app. Please mention your macOS version, Arcana's version (Arcana ▸ About Arcana) and, if it's about a particular archive, what kind of archive it is and where it came from.
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.
- 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.