A preset is a saved bundle of compress options you can pick from the dropdown at the top of the Create Archive sheet — instead of walking through Format / Compression level / Encryption / Strip macOS metadata / Symlink policy every time you make an archive.
One of your presets can be marked the Default. The default loads automatically every time you start a new archive, so the most common case is one click.
Where the picker is
The format / preset picker lives in the staging-window footer, right next to the Create Archive button. It opens to two sections:
- Presets at the top — your saved bundles. The default is marked with a filled star (★), the others with an outline star (☆).
- Formats below — every supported format on its own, with the format’s color badge. Picking one here is “use this format with the system defaults” — no preset, no extra encryption, no extra metadata handling beyond what the Create Archive sheet’s per-format defaults already enforce.
Pick a preset when you have a workflow you do regularly. Pick a format when you want a one-off.
Managing presets
Open Purrchiver → Settings → Compression and scroll to the Presets section:
The table shows each preset’s name (with a Default pill if it’s the one auto-loading), its format, whether it encrypts (AES-256 or —), and when you last touched it. Below the table:
- Add Preset… — open a blank editor for a fresh preset.
- Edit… — modify the selected preset in place. Same sheet as Add, pre-filled.
- Duplicate — clone the selected preset, append " Copy" to the name, open the editor on the copy.
- Remove — delete the selected preset. Doesn’t affect any archive you’ve already created with it.
Right-clicking a row offers the same four actions.
The Add / Edit sheet
Sections, top to bottom:
| Section | What’s in it |
|---|---|
| Preset | Name field plus the Use as default when opening Create Archive toggle. Only one preset can be the default at a time — toggling it on demotes whichever preset was previously default. |
| Format | Format dropdown (every supported format including all tar-family variants, AAR, ISO 9660, single-stream formats), plus Compression level (Store / Fast / Normal / Best — applied to formats that have a level dial). |
| Encryption | Encrypt with AES-256 toggle. Disabled for formats that don’t support encryption (tar-family without a separate encryption layer, ISO 9660, CPIO, the single-stream formats). When on, the resulting preset triggers the password prompt at archive-creation time — the password itself is never stored in the preset. |
| ZIP-only options | Strip macOS metadata when creating ZIPs — only visible when Format is ZIP. The default is on so recipients on Windows and Linux don’t see the ._* resource-fork sidecars. |
| Symbolic links on compress | Store as symlinks / Follow and store target contents / Skip — same three choices as in Compression settings, but pinned per-preset so a “tar.gz for Linux server” preset can choose Store while a “ZIP for Windows recipient” preset can choose Follow. |
| Verify after creation | Smart / Always / Encrypted only / Never — mirrors the global Compression settings default but per-preset for the cases where you want stricter or looser verification on this specific preset. |
Cancel discards your edits. Create (or Save when editing) commits to the SwiftData store immediately and the preset is available everywhere — Create Archive sheet, staging footer picker, Compression settings table — without restarting the app.
The Default preset
The preset marked Default has two effects:
- Loads automatically every time the Create Archive sheet opens. That means “most users never see this sheet at all” — the staging footer’s Create Archive button uses the default and goes straight to the save panel.
- Sits at the top of the picker with a filled star, so the click-twice path (open picker → choose) is also fastest for the default.
A fresh install has one preset named “New Preset” set as the default. Edit its name + options to match your typical workflow, or add a fresh preset and toggle the default flag onto it.
You can also have no default — set the toggle off on every preset. Then the Create Archive sheet always opens to the picker’s last-used selection, and the staging footer’s Create Archive button uses the global Compression settings defaults instead.
Tips
- Name presets for the situation, not the format. “Email-safe ZIP” or “Linux server tar.gz” or “Encrypted backup” beat “ZIP 1” / “ZIP 2” / “7z” because the situation is what you’ll remember in six months.
- One preset per recipient class is the sweet spot. Too few and you’re back to manual configuration; too many and the picker becomes a scroll. Three to five is plenty for most users.
- Duplicate before you experiment. If you have a working preset and want to try different compression-level / encryption settings, Duplicate first so the original stays intact.
- Encryption-on presets don’t store the password. The preset says “this encrypts” — the actual password is prompted at create time and lives in memory for the session only. Same security model as every other encrypted archive in Purrchiver.
What’s deliberately NOT here
- No cloud sync of presets. Presets live on this Mac only. No iCloud, no cross-device sharing, no account — Purrchiver has no backend.
- No preset import/export. Today there’s no “share my preset with a colleague” affordance. If this turns out to be useful, email corey@purrchiver.app — happy to hear the case.
- No password storage in presets. A preset can say “use encryption” but the password is always typed at archive-creation time. Storing passwords in plain SwiftData would be a security hole; storing them in Keychain is on the v1.1 roadmap but intentionally deferred for v1.0 (see Encrypted archives help for the rationale).
Related
- Creating a new archive — what each option in the Create Archive sheet does, with or without a preset
- Encrypted archives — how the encryption toggle on a preset interacts with the session-only password model
- Settings — Compression pane that hosts the Presets table