Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

The Unarchiver VS LZ4

Compare The Unarchiver VS LZ4 and see what are their differences

The Unarchiver logo The Unarchiver

Get the top application for archives on Mac. It's a RAR extractor, it allows you to unzip files, and works with dozens of other formats.

LZ4 logo LZ4

Lossless compression algorithm, providing compression speed at 400 MB/s per core, scalable with...
  • The Unarchiver Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-29
  • LZ4 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-03

The Unarchiver features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    The Unarchiver features a simplified, intuitive interface that makes it easy for users of all experience levels to navigate and use.
  • Supports Multiple Formats
    The software can handle a wide range of file formats, including ZIP, RAR (including v5), 7z, Tar, Gzip, and more.
  • Free to Use
    The Unarchiver is a free application, allowing users to benefit from its capabilities without any cost.
  • Continuous Updates
    The application is regularly updated, ensuring compatibility with new file formats and macOS versions, and introducing new features and improvements.
  • Seamless macOS Integration
    The Unarchiver integrates well with macOS, allowing users to open archives directly from the Finder and other macOS applications.

Possible disadvantages of The Unarchiver

  • Mac-Only Application
    The Unarchiver is exclusively available for macOS, which means users on other operating systems cannot benefit from its features.
  • Limited Advanced Features
    While it handles basic archiving needs excellently, it may lack some advanced features that power users require, such as scheduling and scripting capabilities.
  • Initial Learning Curve
    New users might experience a slight learning curve as they adapt to the application's workflow and settings, despite its user-friendly design.
  • Ads in Free Version
    Some users have reported the presence of advertisements within the free version of the software, which can be intrusive.
  • Partial Extraction Issues
    In rare cases, The Unarchiver might fail to completely extract certain files, requiring users to employ alternative methods.

LZ4 features and specs

  • High Compression and Decompression Speed
    LZ4 is known for its exceptional speed, providing very fast compression and decompression times, which makes it ideal for applications where performance is critical.
  • Low Resource Consumption
    The algorithm is designed to consume minimal CPU and memory resources, allowing it to be used on a wide range of devices, including those with limited hardware capabilities.
  • Real-time Data Processing
    Due to its speed and efficiency, LZ4 is highly suitable for real-time applications where data is processed on-the-fly, such as streaming systems.
  • Wide Applicability
    LZ4 can be effectively used in various applications like data storage, network transmission, and real-time logs or databases, due to its balance of speed and reasonable compression ratio.

Possible disadvantages of LZ4

  • Lower Compression Ratio
    Compared to other compression algorithms like Gzip or Bzip2, LZ4 offers a lower compression ratio, which might not be suitable for scenarios where storage space is a higher priority than speed.
  • Less Mature Ecosystem
    While LZ4 is gaining popularity, it does not have as extensive an ecosystem or tool support as some longer-established algorithms, which might limit its applicability in certain legacy systems.
  • Inefficient for Small Files
    For very small files, the overhead of using LZ4 can sometimes negate any benefits from compression, leading to negligible size reduction or even increased file sizes.

Analysis of The Unarchiver

Overall verdict

  • Yes, The Unarchiver is generally considered a good choice for users seeking a reliable and versatile file extraction tool. Its ability to manage many different file types and its ease of use make it a favorite among macOS users.

Why this product is good

  • The Unarchiver is a popular file extraction tool known for its simplicity and support for a wide variety of archive formats, including ZIP, RAR, 7z, TAR, and more. It integrates well with macOS, providing a seamless user experience with a straightforward and intuitive interface. It's fast, lightweight, and capable of handling files and archives that other extraction tools sometimes struggle with.

Recommended for

    The Unarchiver is recommended for macOS users who need a comprehensive tool for managing and extracting a wide range of file formats. It's particularly useful for those who frequently deal with different types of compressed files and are looking for a hassle-free experience.

The Unarchiver videos

Here's How The Unarchiver Can Make Your Life Easier

More videos:

  • Review - The Unarchiver (MacMost Now 930)

LZ4 videos

Differance between a LZ9 3900 and LZ4 3500 plenum

More videos:

  • Review - Lüm-Tec Lumzilla LZ4

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to The Unarchiver and LZ4)
Archiver
82 82%
18% 18
Archive Manager
83 83%
17% 17
Data Compression
79 79%
21% 21
HR
80 80%
20% 20

User comments

Share your experience with using The Unarchiver and LZ4. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, LZ4 seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 7 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

The Unarchiver mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of The Unarchiver yet. Tracking of The Unarchiver recommendations started around Mar 2021.

LZ4 mentions (7)

  • Quite OK Image is now my favorite asset format
    LZ4[1] intentionally compresses worse than Deflate—where Deflate is LZ77 with Huffman, LZ4 is just LZ77. It’s “we’re saturating Gigabit Ethernet and have some compute left over” compression, not “we need to squeeze our backups as much as possible” compression. If filtering+LZ4 does better than Deflate, then you’ve chosen the filter well. Curiously, for some kinds of binary serialization a good filter in... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Stretch iPhone to Its Limit: 2GiB Stable Diffusion Model Runs Locally on Device
    It doesn't destroy performance for the simple reason that nowadays memory access has higher latency than pure compute. If you need to use compute to produce some data to be stored in memory, your overall throughput could very well be faster than without compression. There have been a large amount of innovation on fast compression in recent years. Traditional compression tools like gzip or xz are geared towards... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Postgres Insider Terminology
    Just looked it up [1] > LZ4 is lossless compression algorithm, providing compression speed > 500 MB/s per core (>0.15 Bytes/cycle). It features an extremely fast decoder, with speed in multiple GB/s per core (~1 Byte/cycle). [1]: https://lz4.github.io/lz4/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Downloadable Planet, Europe and Netherlands MBTiles frequently updated
    Planet: weekly As you can see the planet file has the LZ4 extension, this is a compression-algorithm which a very good speed/size ratio and reduces the size with about 20-25 GB. It. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • F2FS compression performance impact
    I found this interesting dataLZ4 HC (r101) -9) increases transfer speed by about 22%, while only losing a 10% performance on decompression. That's a 12% performance increase overall, not bad! Source: over 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing The Unarchiver and LZ4, you can also consider the following products

Bandizip - Bandizip : All-In-One Free Zip Archiver. Bandizip is a lightweight, fast and free All-In-One Zip Archiver.

7-Zip ZS - A fork of 7-Zip with support for Brotli, Fast-LZMA2, Lizard, LZ4, LZ5 and Zstandard

File Roller - File Roller is an archive manager for the GNOME desktop environment.

XZ Utils - XZ Utils is free general-purpose data compression software with high compression ratio.

Keka - Keka is India's most desired HR & Payroll software. Keka's HR Payroll software help organizations create the best employee experience EVER! check for a free trial.

NanaZip - NanaZip is an open source file archiver intended for the modern Windows experience