How to Open RAR Files on Mac: The Unarchiver, Keka, and Terminal Methods

You downloaded a file and it has a .rar extension. Double-click does nothing. "How do I even open this?" — that's the moment this article exists for.

RAR files don't open on Mac by default because Apple never licensed the RAR format. macOS handles ZIP natively but RAR requires a third-party tool. The good news: the best options are free and take under two minutes to set up.

Quick steps:

That's enough for most people. The rest of this article covers: which tool to use for different situations, the command-line approach with Homebrew, RAR5 files that older tools refuse to open, password-protected archives, and multi-part .part1.rar sets.

Why macOS Can't Open RAR Files Natively

RAR is a proprietary format owned by RARLAB, the company behind WinRAR. Opening RAR files requires either a license or a compatible open-source implementation.

Apple chose not to include RAR support in macOS. ZIP is handled natively because it's an open standard. RAR is not. That's the whole story.

macOS does include a tar command in Terminal, but it handles .tar, .tar.gz, .zip, and similar formats. RAR is not supported by macOS's built-in tar. Any guide telling you to run tar -xf archive.rar is wrong — you'll get an error or a corrupted extraction.

The command-line path that actually works uses unar (installed via Homebrew). More on that below.

Tool Comparison: Which One Should You Use?

Which one to pick:

• First time user, just need it to work: The Unarchiver. Zero configuration, Mac App Store, no account.
• Need to create archives too, or want more control: Keka. Drag-and-drop to Dock, good options panel.
• Comfortable with Terminal, want to automate or batch-extract: unar via Homebrew.
• Archive won't open in any of the above: 7zz via Homebrew as a last resort.

Are these tools safe? Yes. The Unarchiver and Keka are well-established Mac apps with millions of users. They extract files locally — nothing is uploaded to any server. The Unarchiver is on the Mac App Store (sandboxed by Apple), Keka is open-source on GitHub.

How to Open RAR Files with The Unarchiver

1. Open the Mac App Store and search for "The Unarchiver." Install it (it's free).
2. Find your .rar file in Finder. Right-click it and choose Open With > The Unarchiver.
3. A dialog asks where to extract the files. Choose a folder, then click Extract.

After the first use, you can set The Unarchiver as the default app for .rar files: open The Unarchiver, go to Preferences > Archive Formats, and check RAR. From that point, double-clicking any .rar file opens it automatically.

How to Open RAR Files with Keka

Keka is a compression tool that also extracts most archive formats including RAR and RAR5.

1. Download Keka from keka.io (free) or the Mac App Store ($3).
2. Drag your .rar file directly onto the Keka icon in your Dock.
3. Keka extracts the contents into the same folder as the .rar file by default. You can change the destination in Keka's preferences.

Keka's advantage: it gives you more control over output folder, handles damaged archives better, and lets you set different extraction rules per format. According to user reports on Reddit and the Keka GitHub discussions, it also tends to be faster on large multi-gigabyte archives — community benchmarks suggest roughly 30% faster on RAR sets over 1 GB, though results vary by drive speed and archive structure.

How to Open RAR Files from Terminal (Using unar)

If you're comfortable with the command line, unar is a clean solution. It handles RAR, RAR5, password-protected files, and multi-part archives.

First, install Homebrew if you don't have it:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

On Apple Silicon Macs (M1/M2/M3), Homebrew installs to /opt/homebrew/ instead of /usr/local/. If you get "command not found" after installing, add this to your ~/.zshrc:

export PATH="/opt/homebrew/bin:$PATH"

Then install unar:

brew install unar

Extract a file:

unar archive.rar

For a password-protected archive:

unar -p yourpassword archive.rar

Extract to a specific folder:

unar -o ~/Desktop/extracted archive.rar

Preview archive contents without extracting using lsar (comes with the unar package):

lsar archive.rar

This lists all files inside the archive before you commit to extracting. Useful for large archives when you want to confirm you downloaded the right thing.

unar works without any GUI setup and is scriptable, which makes it useful for batch processing or automated workflows.

How to Open RAR5 Files

RAR5 is a newer compression format (introduced in WinRAR 5.0) with better compression ratios and error recovery. Some older tools fail on RAR5 files with cryptic errors like "unsupported format" or "unknown compression method."

If your archive won't open:

1. Update your tool first. Current versions of The Unarchiver (4.x) and Keka (1.4+) both handle RAR5.
2. If updating doesn't help, try unar via Homebrew — it uses a different library and tends to be more forgiving with RAR5.
3. 7-Zip (available as 7zz via Homebrew: brew install sevenzip) also handles RAR5 reliably.

How to Open Password-Protected RAR Files

Both The Unarchiver and Keka prompt for a password automatically when you try to extract a protected archive. Just enter the password in the dialog and continue.

From the terminal with unar:

unar -p "your password here" archive.rar

If you don't know the password, you'll need to get it from whoever sent you the archive. No tool can bypass encryption on a properly protected RAR file.

How to Extract Multi-Part RAR Archives

Multi-part archives come as a series of files: archive.part1.rar, archive.part2.rar, archive.part3.rar, and so on.

Only open the first part. The tool reads all subsequent parts automatically as long as they're in the same folder.

With The Unarchiver or Keka: right-click archive.part1.rar and open it. The tool finds the rest on its own.

With unar:

unar archive.part1.rar

If any part is missing or corrupted, extraction will fail at that point. The archive is only complete when all parts are present.

Troubleshooting: Common Problems

"Cannot open file: it does not appear to be a valid archive"

The file may be partially downloaded or corrupted. Check the file size against what was advertised. A partial download produces a file with the right extension but broken content — redownload and try again.

Extraction starts but fails partway through

In multi-part archives, this usually means one part is missing or damaged. Check that all .part*.rar files are present and re-download the problematic part.

"Encrypted file — wrong password or corrupt"

Double-check the password for typos. Some archives use case-sensitive passwords. If you copied the password from a message, check for invisible characters or trailing spaces.

The Unarchiver says "No files extracted"

This sometimes happens with very new RAR5 archives. Update The Unarchiver via the App Store, or switch to unar for this specific file.

macOS security warning: "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified"

This happens when Keka or another app is downloaded from outside the Mac App Store and macOS quarantines it. To open it:

1. Go to System Settings > Privacy & Security
2. Scroll down to the "Security" section
3. You'll see a message about the blocked app — click Open Anyway

Alternatively, from Terminal:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Keka.app

This removes the quarantine flag. Keka is open-source and safe; this is just macOS's Gatekeeper being cautious about apps from outside the App Store.

Slow extraction on large archives

Normal for archives with many small files. If speed matters, Keka is generally faster than The Unarchiver on large multi-gigabyte RAR sets. unar from the command line is also fast and avoids GUI overhead entirely.

When to Ask for ZIP Instead

If you control the situation, ask the sender to use ZIP. macOS, Windows, and Linux all handle ZIP natively without any extra software.

RAR's main advantages are: better recovery records (useful when downloads might get corrupted mid-transfer) and stronger AES-256 encryption. If neither of those matter for your use case, ZIP removes the "how do I open this?" problem entirely.