Whitecap

Whitecap is a GTK 4 and libadwaita archive browser for GNOME. It provides a File Roller-inspired window for opening, browsing archive contents by folder, searching the current folder, selecting, and extracting. Drop an archive onto the archive location bar to open it.

Double-click a folder to browse into it; use the up button to return to its parent. Press Ctrl+A while the contents list is focused to select all visible entries. Drag selected entries from the list to a file manager for quick extraction. Delete selected entries with the toolbar's trash button or the Delete key, then confirm the action. Selecting a folder removes its contents recursively.

Supported formats

Formats that support editing and extraction:

• ZIP
• 7z
• TAR, including gzip, bzip2, xz, and zstd compressed TAR archives

Formats that support viewing and extraction only:

• RAR4 and RAR5
• ACE (.ace)
• FreeArc (.arc; requires the unarc executable on PATH)

The location bar prefixes read-only archives with a 🔒 padlock.

When extracting from the Extract button, select one or more entries to extract only those items. Leave the selection empty to extract the full archive.

Build and run

Install Rust and the GTK 4/libadwaita development packages, then run:

cargo run

Linux packages

The GitHub Actions workflow builds .deb and .rpm packages on pushes, pull requests, and manual runs. Successful builds on the default branch publish prereleases with the .deb and .rpm attached as separate release assets; pushing a v* tag publishes a versioned release. Pull requests and manual runs build the packages without publishing a release. The packages install Whitecap and its desktop launcher, and require GTK 4.10 and libadwaita 1.5 or newer. They also register Whitecap for all supported archive MIME types in the file manager. FreeArc extraction additionally requires the separate unarc executable on PATH.

When an archive is open, drop files or folders onto its contents to add them to ZIP, 7z, or TAR archives (including compressed TAR variants). Dropped folders keep their folder names and internal paths. Whitecap does not modify RAR, ACE, or FreeArc archives; dropping items onto those archives displays a warning. Deletion is also supported for ZIP, 7z, and TAR archives and their compressed variants; RAR, ACE, and FreeArc remain read-only and display a warning if deletion is attempted. Deleting entries rebuilds TAR archives and compressed TAR archives, so large archives can take time and require temporary disk space. Existing archive paths are not overwritten. Adding to ZIP stages a copy of the archive; adding to TAR rebuilds it, and adding to 7z recompresses its existing entries. Large archive updates can take time and require additional temporary disk space.

Whitecap prompts for passwords when opening encrypted-header 7z or RAR archives, and when extracting encrypted ZIP (ZipCrypto), 7z, RAR, or ACE entries. A supplied password is kept in memory only while that archive is open; encrypted archive creation is not supported. WinZip AES-encrypted ZIP entries and password-protected FreeArc archives are not currently supported.

Project layout

• src/main.rs starts the application.
• src/ui/ contains the GTK/libadwaita window, separate open/archive actions, archive listing and row rendering, drag-and-drop handling, and shared UI state.
• src/archive/mod.rs exposes the archive API; format.rs detects formats and operations.rs dispatches archive operations.
• src/archive/zip/, tar/, rar/, sevenz/, ace/, and freearc/ handle their respective formats.
• src/archive/path.rs contains shared archive-path and selection helpers.

FreeArc archives use the separately installed unarc extractor at runtime. Whitecap does not bundle that executable; install a compatible FreeArc unarc build, such as xredor/unarc, and make sure it is available on PATH.

ACE support uses the unarc-rs library. Multi-volume ACE archives are not supported, and individual entries are limited to 1 GiB.

TO-DO

Functionality

• Nested Archive support (archive inside another archive)

UI

• Make the address bar scrollable instead of increasing the window size on archive with large paths
• Replace the current file viewing model

Read + Write Support

• LHA and LZH archives
• ZIPX archives (with support for bzip2, zstd, ppmd8, lzma and xz compressed entries)

Read-only support

• ISO9660 CD-ROM images (with optional Rockridge or Joliet extensions)

RAR library notice

RAR support uses unrar-rs, which includes the following UnRAR source-code terms:

UnRAR source code may be used in any software to handle RAR archives without limitations free of charge, but cannot be used to develop RAR (WinRAR) compatible archiver and to re-create RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary. Distribution of modified UnRAR source code in separate form or as a part of other software is permitted, provided that full text of this paragraph, starting from "UnRAR source code" words, is included in license, or in documentation if license is not available, and in source code comments of resulting package.