Ziplark
Free, fast, cross-platform archiver. Extracts ZIP, RAR (incl. RAR5), 7z, tar, ISO and the common compressed-tar variants; creates ZIP (with AES-256), 7z and tar archives. One small Rust engine, three ways to drive it: a desktop app, a CLI, and an MCP server.
Install
# macOS — Homebrew
brew install --cask zhitongblog/tap/ziplark # desktop app
brew install zhitongblog/tap/ziplark # CLI + MCP (ziplark, ziplark-mcp)
# Windows — Scoop (CLI + MCP)
scoop bucket add ziplark https://github.com/zhitongblog/scoop-bucket
scoop install ziplark
# winget (pending review): winget install zhitongblog.Ziplark
Or grab a build for any platform from the releases page
(macOS .dmg, Windows .msi/.exe, Linux .deb/.AppImage, and CLI archives).
| Read / Extract | Create | Encryption | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ZIP | ✅ | ✅ | AES-256 (read ZipCrypto) |
| 7z | ✅ | ✅ | AES-256 |
| RAR / RAR5 | ✅ | — | reads encrypted |
| tar | ✅ | ✅ | — |
| tar.gz / .bz2 / .xz / .zst / .lz4 | ✅ | ✅ | — |
| gz / bz2 / xz / zst / lz4 (single stream) | ✅ | ✅ | — |
| ISO 9660 / Joliet (disc image) | ✅ | — | — |
RAR and ISO are extract-only: RAR's compression format is proprietary, and ISO is a disc-image container (we read ISO 9660 + Joliet with our own dependency-free parser). Everything else can be created as well as read.
Why Ziplark
- Small. Size-optimized release profile (
opt-level=z, LTO, stripped,panic=abort). The desktop app uses the OS webview (no bundled Chromium). - Safe. Every extraction path is funneled through a single zip-slip guard — no entry can ever escape the destination directory.
- One engine. The GUI, CLI and MCP server are thin shells over
ziplark-core; whatever the CLI does, the app does identically.
Repository layout
crates/ziplark-core the archive engine (all formats, the security guard)
crates/ziplark-cli the `ziplark` command-line tool
crates/ziplark-mcp the MCP server (drive Ziplark from any LLM)
src-tauri the Tauri 2 desktop app (Rust commands)
ui the desktop frontend (vanilla HTML/CSS/JS)
1. Desktop app
# dev run (opens the window)
cargo tauri dev # or: cargo run -p ziplark-gui
# build a release .app + .dmg (macOS), .exe/.msi (Windows), AppImage/deb (Linux)
cargo tauri build
Drag an archive onto the window to inspect & extract it, or switch to Create to drag in files/folders, pick a format + compression level (and optional password), and save.
2. CLI — ziplark
cargo build --release -p ziplark-cli # binary at target/release/ziplark
ziplark list movie.rar
ziplark extract photos.zip -o ./out
ziplark create backup.tar.zst ./src ./README.md --level best
ziplark create secret.zip ./private --password hunter2
ziplark test download.7z
ziplark info mystery.bin
Every command takes --json for scripting. --include <PAT> filters entries on
extract; --level store|fast|default|best and --password apply to create.
Right-click (file-manager) integration
Add Extract here with Ziplark and Compress to ZIP with Ziplark to your OS file manager's context menu:
ziplark shell-integration install # enable
ziplark shell-integration status # show what's installed
ziplark shell-integration uninstall # remove
Per platform: macOS installs two Automator Quick Actions (Finder → right-click →
Quick Actions); Windows adds per-user (HKCU, no admin) shell verbs on archive
file types and on files/folders; Linux installs KDE service menus and Nautilus
scripts. Every entry just calls the ziplark CLI (extract-here / compress-zip),
so it follows wherever the binary lives. Both helper commands are also usable
directly:
ziplark extract-here movie.zip # → ./movie/ next to the archive
ziplark compress-zip ./photos ./a.txt # → ./Archive.zip next to them
3. MCP server — ziplark-mcp
A Model Context Protocol server (JSON-RPC over stdio). Read tools
(ziplark_info, ziplark_list, ziplark_test) are always available; the write tools
(ziplark_extract, ziplark_create) require --allow-write.
cargo build --release -p ziplark-mcp
Register it with an MCP client:
{
"mcpServers": {
"ziplark": {
"command": "/path/to/target/release/ziplark-mcp",
"args": ["--allow-write"]
}
}
}
Building & testing
cargo test # engine round-trip + security tests
cargo build --release # all crates, size-optimized
License
MIT © 2026 doaipm — a doaipm project. See LICENSE.
Ziplark bundles third-party open-source components under their own licenses, acknowledged in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md. Note in particular that RAR extraction uses the UnRAR library, which is under the UnRAR license (not MIT) and may not be used to re-create the RAR compression algorithm.
Server Config
{
"mcpServers": {
"ziplark": {
"command": "ziplark-mcp",
"args": [
"--allow-write"
]
}
}
}