RAR for Mac is a lightweight compression tool for Macs, that can unpack most common compressed file formats such as ZIP and JAR and is the closest thing to WinRAR for Mac.

RAR for Mac is from the same developer who brought you WinRAR for Mac but of course, it isn't called WinRAR for Mac because it's a Mac and not a Windows application. RAR is a powerful archive manager. It can back up your data and reduce the size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format. The application not only includes support for extracting virtually any kind of file compression format, it also boasts a no-nonsense approach to reducing file sizes.

When you download RAR, you might be confused by the fact that it's just a folder of files. This is because there is no graphical user interface for RAR. It works only via the command line using Terminal so if you've got no experience of using Terminal, then you're going to be a bit stranded. If you're willing to learn however, here's how to do it...

Place the files in any folder on your hard drive, and run the utility by typing in the full path to the application (e.g. to run from the current directory, type "./rar" or "./unrar" followed by the appropriate parameters). If you get stuck, simply type the application name (RAR or UNRAR) without any parameters to see list of useful commands.

However, this will no doubt prove too complicated for most general users and considering the fact that you have to buy a license too for RAR, there are far better applications out there such as Zipeg which is both free and has a GUI thus making it much easier to use.

RAR is a powerful compression tool and the closest thing to WinRAR for Mac but if you don't know how to run programs from the Terminal, it won't be much use to you.