HatchZip: unzip big files without double the space

A small, familiar annoyance

You know the moment. A photographer sends a huge ZIP of the shoot, or your accountant shares a year of scanned invoices, and your computer tells you there isn't enough space to open it. Strange, since the file is already sitting right there.

Here's what's going on. Most unzip tools build a full copy of everything inside while still holding on to the original archive. For a while, you need room for both.

What HatchZip does differently

HatchZip is a free, open-source extractor for Windows, Mac and Linux. It opens ZIP, 7z, RAR, tar and even archives split into several pieces, and it does it "in place". In its makers' words, it needs free space for the extracted files only, not for the archive plus its contents.

One of the labels on the project is "crash-safe", which suggests someone thought hard about what happens if things go wrong halfway through. It comes as a normal desktop app, plus a typed-command version for the more technical folks on your team. It recently turned up in GitHub's weekly trending roundup, so people are clearly noticing.

Why it's worth a thought

If your team lives on laptops and swaps big folders with clients, this is one of those quiet tools that saves an afternoon of deleting old files just to open a new one. Not flashy. Just kind.

Words worth knowing

• Archive: one file that bundles many files together, like a ZIP. Think of a suitcase.
• Open source: the recipe is public, so anyone can check it, use it or improve it.
• In place: unpacking the suitcase where it stands, instead of buying a second one first.

Next time "disk full" pops up, search for HatchZip on GitHub before you start deleting.