Untar Editor's Review

Untar is an Open Source frontend which uncompresses various archive types.

Basically, this application does the same job as 'The Unarchiver' or 'StuffIt Expander'. Its main disadvantage is the lower usability of the user interface.

In order to use Untar, you need to provide the path to the archive, and the path to the destination directory. You can't drag the file onto it's browsing window because it won't work. However, you can drag the file over the application's icon in order to start the decompression having as destination the location of the source file.

The destination directory can be set any way you want to. 'Untar' doesn't have a setting which would allow you to set a default path. Another thing that misses is the support for extension registration in order to extract a supported archive just by double clicking it.

The list of supported archives is decent. The producer did a good job. You can find in that list the support for archive types such as RAR, among the usual Open Source un-archivers. Check the producer's Website for a complete reference.

The testing job wasn't easy for this application as I used couple of big archives. They were both a compressed 2.5GB directory which contains various file types. The archives were compressed as gzip and as bzip2. Untar behaved well without slowing down the machine while uncompressing the content.

Pluses: it supports many archive types, it has a better usability than the command line.

Drawbacks / flaws: it has lower usability than 'The Unarchiver' or 'StuffIt Expander', it doesn't support a default destination path.

In conclusion: it's a quite good decompression tool.

version reviewed: 1.3