Look inside an archive before anything gets unpacked.
A free, ad-free archive manager for Linux.
Double-click a .zip on most Linux desktops and your files are scattered across
the current folder before you've had a chance to look at them.
ArchiveFree opens a window instead. You see what's inside — folders, file sizes, dates — and then you decide: extract everything, extract the two files you actually wanted, or extract somewhere else entirely. Nothing touches your disk until you say so.
Browse first. Extract second.
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| You always know where files will land | Read a file without unpacking anything |
- Opens what you'll actually run into — zip, 7z, rar, tar and every compressed flavour of it (gz, bz2, xz, zst), plain gz/bz2/xz/zst, iso, cab, deb, rpm, lha, arj, cpio, wim, dmg and more.
- Drag files out to extract them — drag straight from the archive into a file manager or onto the desktop. This works on Wayland, where the drag-out feature of every other Linux archive manager has been broken for years.
- Preview without extracting — read a text file, a README or a config, or look at an image, straight out of the archive.
- Never silently overwrites — if a file already exists it asks, and shows you both versions so the choice is an informed one.
- Passwords and split archives — prompts when a password is needed, and finds every part of a multi-part archive automatically.
- Makes new archives too — pick a format, pick how hard to compress, add a password or split it into parts if you want.
- Edits archives in place — add files to an existing archive, or delete entries from it. Changes are written to a copy and swapped in only when complete, so an interrupted edit never damages the original.
- Stays responsive — a 4 GB archive won't freeze the window, and you can cancel anything mid-way.
- Explains itself when things go wrong — "this archive is damaged, it may not have finished downloading" instead of a stack trace.
No adverts. No telemetry. No accounts. No paid tier. Not now, not later.
Download archivefree_<version>_all.deb from the
latest release,
then double-click it — or, in a terminal:
sudo apt install ./archivefree_*_all.debapt will pull in anything else it needs. To also handle 7z, rar, iso and
encrypted zip files:
sudo apt install 7zipflatpak install flathub io.github.justlinuxnoob.ArchiveFreeNote: the Flathub submission is still pending — see packaging/flatpak/FLATHUB.md for exactly what is left. Until it's accepted, grab
archivefree.flatpakfrom the latest release and install it directly:flatpak install --user archivefree.flatpak
The Flatpak bundles its own 7-Zip, so every supported format works out of the box with nothing else to install.
The first time you run ArchiveFree it offers to become the app that opens archive files. That's one click, it doesn't ask for your password, and you can undo it any time from Preferences → Default Archive Application.
| Format | Open | Create | Needs |
|---|---|---|---|
.zip |
✅ | ✅ | built in |
.tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar.xz |
✅ | ✅ | built in |
.gz, .bz2, .xz (single files) |
✅ | ✅ | built in |
.tar.zst, .zst |
✅ | ✅ | zstd |
.tar.lz4, .lz4 |
✅ | ✅ | lz4 |
.tar.lzma, .lzma |
✅ | ✅ | built in |
.7z |
✅ | ✅ | 7zip |
.rar |
✅ | — | 7zip or unrar |
.iso, .cab, .dmg, .wim, .msi, .xar |
✅ | — | 7zip |
.deb, .rpm, .cpio, .lha, .arj, .ar |
✅ | — | 7zip |
| Password-protected zip (AES) | ✅ | ✅ | 7zip |
| Split / multi-part archives | ✅ | ✅ | 7zip |
.cbz, .cbr, .cb7 (comics) |
✅ | — | built in / 7zip |
.epub, .jar, .war, .apk, .whl, .xpi |
✅ | — | built in |
.docx, .xlsx, .odt, .ods |
✅ | — | built in |
Preferences → Formats shows which helper programs you have and what each one would add. If a format needs something you don't have, ArchiveFree tells you the exact command to install it rather than just failing.
| Ctrl+O | Open an archive |
| Ctrl+N | New archive |
| Ctrl+E | Extract (selection, or everything) |
| Ctrl+Shift+A | Add files to the archive |
| Delete | Delete the selection from the archive |
| Ctrl+F | Search inside the archive |
| Space | Preview the selected file |
| Alt+↑ | Go to the parent folder |
| Esc | Clear search, or cancel the current operation |
ArchiveFree is a graphical app, but it takes a few flags so file managers (and you) can drive it:
archivefree photos.zip # open it in a window
archivefree --extract-here photos.zip # extract beside the archive
archivefree --extract-to ~/Pictures photos.zip
archivefree --new-archive ~/Documents # open the create dialog, pre-filledFor developers
ArchiveFree is pure Python — there is nothing to compile.
# Debian / Ubuntu / MX
sudo apt install python3 python3-gi gir1.2-gtk-4.0 gir1.2-adw-1 7zip
# Fedora
sudo dnf install python3 python3-gobject gtk4 libadwaita p7zip
# Arch
sudo pacman -S python python-gobject gtk4 libadwaita 7zipRequires Python 3.11+, GTK 4.10+ and libadwaita 1.4+.
git clone https://github.com/justlinuxnoob/archivefree.git
cd archivefree
./run-dev.sh # or: ./run-dev.sh some-archive.zippython3 -m pytest tests/ -vThe suite round-trips real archives in every supported format and cross-checks
the results against the system's own unzip, tar and 7z, so it catches
"works against my own code" bugs. It also covers passwords, split volumes,
truncated archives, name collisions and path-traversal attacks.
packaging/deb/build.sh # -> dist/archivefree_<version>_all.deb
flatpak-builder --repo=repo build-dir \
packaging/flatpak/io.github.justlinuxnoob.ArchiveFree.ymlarchivefree/
├── core/ # no GTK imports anywhere in here — importable and testable headless
│ ├── detect.py # format sniffing by magic bytes, extension as tie-breaker
│ ├── registry.py # picks a backend: stdlib first, CLI tools as fallback
│ ├── backends/ # zip, tar, single-stream, 7-Zip, unrar
│ ├── jobs.py # worker threads, progress, cancellation
│ ├── tree.py # flat entry list -> browsable folder tree
│ └── create.py # making archives
├── ui/ # GTK4 + libadwaita; talks to core only through jobs
└── integration/ # MIME defaults and file-manager menus
The rule the codebase follows: backends never touch GTK. They report
progress through a Progress object, and jobs.py marshals that onto the main
loop. That's what keeps the interface responsive and the core unit-testable
without a display.
Bug reports and patches are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. If ArchiveFree failed to open an archive you care about, that's the most useful report you can file.
GPL-3.0-or-later. Free software, and it stays that way.