Unpacker V2

A drag-and-drop Windows archiver that stays out of your way: drop archives to extract them, drop anything else to compress it, or point it at a folder and convert every archive inside to one format. Built on the 7-Zip engine, so ZIP/ZIP64, 7z, tar, gzip, bzip2, xz, zstd, cab, iso, wim and RAR (extract) all just work, on files of any size.

What it does

• Create 7z, ZIP (ZIP64, AES-256), tar, tar.gz, tar.xz, tar.bz2 — and RAR if you have WinRAR installed.
• Extract everything 7-Zip reads, including RAR/RAR5, split volumes (.001, .part1.rar, .z01), and encrypted archives (it asks for the password instead of failing).
• Mass convert — drop a stack of archives, or scan a whole folder, and repack them all as 7z/ZIP/tar.*; verified before the original is touched.
• Mass extract — point it at a folder of mixed ZIP/RAR/7z/tar.* (or drop several archives, or right-click a folder in Explorer). Each archive into its own folder, everything merged into one folder, or contents next to each archive. Archives found inside the extracted files can be extracted too (and optionally binned), one at a time so the disk isn't thrashed. Sources go to the Recycle Bin only when every archive succeeded; a Mass-extract-report.txt says what happened.
• Test archive integrity.
• Smart compress — drop files in Compress mode and the app analyzes them (what they are, plus how well a sample actually deflates) and suggests a format and level with a reason: Store for photos/video, solid 7z for documents, capped solid blocks for mixed sets. Presets: Everyday, Archival, Custom.
• Size limits — 1, 2, 4 (FAT32-safe), 10, 20 or 50 GB per archive, as independent archives (each opens on its own; folders kept together where they fit) or as volumes of one archive. A single file bigger than the limit becomes its own volume set automatically.
• Manifests — an 8-character ID links archives and a text manifest: Album_K7M3Q9XZ-01of03.7z … Album_K7M3Q9XZ.manifest.txt, listing every file, size, date and which archive holds it, optionally with SHA-256. A copy rides inside each archive. Verify a manifest later checks every archive is present and intact and, with hashes, that every file is byte-for-byte what was archived.
• Google Takeout tab — a guided flow: select the downloaded parts (or an already-extracted folder), check them, extract, then organize into clean libraries. Photos get dates from Google's JSON, EXIF taken-time for JPEGs, Year/Month folders, duplicate removal and an album index; Drive, Mail and every other service land in one folder each. Handles multi-set exports and browser re-downloads.
• Google Takeout (quick merge) — point it at your downloads folder (or drop the parts) and it groups the numbered parts into exports, flags missing parts, checks every download for damage first, checks disk space for the whole export, then merges the parts one at a time into a single folder. Interrupted runs resume. Options: skip/overwrite/keep-both on collisions, drop the Takeout/ wrapper, tidy Google Photos JSON sidecars into _json folders, Recycle-Bin the parts when done. A Takeout-import-report.txt lands in the folder.
• Password / AES encryption, split volumes (FAT32-safe 4 GB preset), verify after every job, per-job cancel, a bounded parallel queue.
• Optional Explorer right-click entries: Add to archive, Extract here, Extract to folder…, Convert archive….

Built for jobs you walk away from

• Closing the window while jobs run asks: keep running in the tray, cancel and quit, or stay. A setting makes "hide to tray" the silent default.
• The PC is kept awake while the queue is busy (toggle in Settings).
• Cancel or failure removes half-written archives; chunks that already verified are kept. A manifest is only written once every archive is in.
• Archives containing symbolic links or junctions are refused unless you allow them, because a link can point outside the folder you extract to.
• Passwords never reach the window's job list. They are visible on the 7-Zip/WinRAR command line while a job runs, like every archiver.
• Inputs inside OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox or iCloud folders get a warning: cloud-only placeholders download as they are read.
• Jobs that finish with warnings turn amber and list them; duplicates already in the queue are skipped.

What it deliberately won't do

• Create RAR without WinRAR. Only rar.exe can write RAR and its licence forbids bundling it. Extracting RAR needs nothing extra.
• Extract an archive whose entries point outside the destination folder, or one that looks like a zip bomb (>1000:1 and >1 GB), unless you turn that guard off in Settings.
• Delete anything with unlink. "Remove original" means the Recycle Bin, and only after the new archive passed an integrity test.

Run from source

Needs Node 22+ (Node 24 works; there are no native modules).

npm install
npm run dev

The 7-Zip engine is expected at vendor/7zip/7z.exe + 7z.dll (or an installed 7-Zip in Program Files). Get it from https://www.7-zip.org/download.html: install 7-Zip, then copy 7z.exe, 7z.dll and License.txt from C:\Program Files\7-Zip into vendor/7zip/. 7-Zip is LGPL; the RAR decompression code inside it carries the unRAR restriction (it may not be used to build a RAR compressor), which this app respects.

npm test          # node --test, pure modules only
npm run dist      # dist/unpacker-v2-<ver>-setup.exe

Documentation

• User guide — every flow, with screenshots.
• Project site — the same, prettier.
• CHANGELOG and what's planned.
• CLAUDE.md — architecture, invariants and the gotchas that cost real debugging time. Read it before changing anything.

Screens

Smart compress	Google Takeout

Mass extract	Google Takeout tab

Settings and updates	About

Install

Grab the latest unpacker-v2-<version>-setup.exe from Releases. One-click, per-user install (no admin), silent auto-update from GitHub Releases. The build is unsigned; SmartScreen will warn the first time.

Licence

MIT. Bundled 7-Zip is © Igor Pavlov, LGPL + unRAR restriction; see vendor/7zip/License.txt.