Skip to main content

Extracting several archives at once

Drop two or more archives onto the Purrchiver dock icon (or the Welcome window) and Purrchiver opens a dedicated batch-extract window. The window lists every archive you dropped, lets you pick one destination folder for all of them, and works through them one at a time — marking each as completed as it goes.

Batch-extract window

When the batch window appears

Purrchiver shows the batch window only when every item you dropped is a recognized archive format (ZIP, RAR, 7z, tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, etc. — see Format support).

If you drop a mix of archives and other files, Purrchiver assumes you want to compress everything together and opens a new compress window instead — same as single-file behavior.

Where the extracted files land

Each archive extracts into its own subfolder inside the destination you choose. For example, if you drop photos.zip, music.7z, and backup.tar.gz with destination ~/Downloads, you’ll end up with:

  • ~/Downloads/photos/
  • ~/Downloads/music/
  • ~/Downloads/backup/

This keeps everything tidy and avoids collisions when two archives share filenames.

Encrypted archives in a batch

Encrypted archives in a batch are marked as failed in the queue with the password error inline — batch extract doesn’t prompt for passwords mid-run. The other archives in the batch continue normally.

To extract an encrypted archive, open it directly in Purrchiver (double-click in Finder, or drop it on the app by itself). The single-archive flow surfaces the password prompt and unlocks normally. After unlocking, you can drop the remaining unencrypted archives as a batch.

Sound when finished

The Play sound when finished checkbox plays a single system Glass tone the moment every archive in the queue has reached a terminal state (done, skipped, or failed). It’s off by default — Purrchiver never makes noise unless you explicitly opt in for this batch.

The setting applies to this batch only; it doesn’t carry over to the next one.

When the batch finishes

The window stays on screen with a summary of each row’s outcome (✓ done / ⚠ failed / – skipped). Click Done to close. No post-completion popup, no surprise dialog — same as single-archive extract.

Canceling mid-batch

Click Cancel at any time. The currently-extracting archive is cancelled; the remaining archives in the queue are marked as skipped.

Archives that already finished stay on disk — cancellation doesn’t roll those back.

Watching progress in the Activity window

Batch progress is also surfaced in Purrchiver’s global Activity window (Window → Activity, or ⌘0). Useful if you want to flip back to the Welcome window or another archive while a batch runs in the background — the Activity window keeps a live view of every queued, running, and finished job in one place.

Dock badge during a batch

While a batch is running, Purrchiver’s dock icon shows a small badge with the count of archives still waiting (or currently extracting). The badge clears the moment the queue finishes.

This is the only operation in Purrchiver that updates the dock badge — single-archive extracts don’t (they’re typically too quick to matter).

Tips

  • Drop a Finder selection of archives. Cmd-click several archives in Finder, then drag them all to the Purrchiver dock icon. Faster than opening Purrchiver first.
  • Pick a sensible destination at the start of each batch. The destination picker doesn’t persist between batches in v1.0 — set it fresh when you open the batch window. (Per-batch persistence is on the v1.1 list.)
  • Encrypted-in-batch is a known limitation. A future update may add inline password prompting in batch context. For now, do encrypted archives one at a time.