14 DAY TRIAL // The vast majority of people only work with archives by expanding them to access their contents. For the most common types of archives, the Finder does this automatically, when you double click them. Even for those who occasionally need to create archives, the Finder's contextual menu option is more than enough. The percentage of people that actually use a heavy duty archiving tool is very small, and like all specialized programs, these applications tend to be packed full of complex features. For those that want all the features without having to sacrifice any usability, Springy is a perfect choice.
What it does Springy is an archive tool that takes things to the next level. Whether you need to create, modify or simply read archives, this program has all the features you need while still managing to be as simple to use as the Finder. The combination of extensive features and simplicity makes it equally good for archiving veterans and first timers alike.
Working with it Despite the fact that the main purpose of archives is to reduce the amount of space that their contents take up, more and more they are being used as a simple way to move a large number of files or folders only by manipulating one single element. While disk images have largely replaced archives when it comes to software, they have not done so for documents. Springy recognizes this and treats archives like what they are, beyond the compression. Any and all files supported by the application can be opened and browsed as if it were any old folder. The application supports the same view modes as the Finder and lets users manipulate the information in much the same way. Hitting enter will let you rename files and drag and drop is fully supported both for extracting files out of archives as well as adding them in. This ease of use combined with the fact that you can browse multiple archives, each in its own window, change the view settings just like in the finder, quickly search through the contents of archives as well as preview the contents without actually having to extract them beforehand make Springy a joy to use.
But all this ease of use and familiarity would be wasted if the application was not powerful enough to get the job done and fortunately Springy is. It can work with all the most common types of archives and disk images that users see across all operating systems. The full list includes ZIP, TAR, TAR GZIP, BZIP2, RAR, SIT, JAR, WAR and EAR. It can even open comic book archives such as CBZ and CBR and is fully compatible with DMG and ISO disk images. Springy supports the Zip64 extension to the standard PKZip format that removes limits in item numbers within a ZIP archive and sizes of the archive and archived contents, for those people with monster archives; and also offers 28-bit (AES-128), 192-bit (AES-192) and 256-bit (AES-256) AES encryption, for those who value security. Last but not least, Spingy supports multi segment archives, letting you both split and join segments for easier transfer over limited methods such as mail attachments.
Automatic for the people While Springy is great for hands on manipulation of archives where you go in and do things to files, for a heavy duty archiving tool, you are going to want to be able to do things without lots of work. Fortunately this application can do just that and you can get complex results fast once you take the time to set things up. From the application's preferences, you can set up the way Springy behaves when you open the application, or a file, as well as how new archives will be created and how the archiving process itself will be handled. These settings can be set up for each archive type individually and you have total control over how things are done. Once all the settings are right, you can very quickly create archives just by selecting the desired files in the Finder and using the contextual menu plug-in. Similarly, the application lets you set up Favorite extraction locations, which are available via a submenu. Between these and the recent locations, you will be able to quickly extract items with no additional browsing to the desired location.
The Good Powerful and easy to use, Springy is one of those rare applications that gets just about everything right. No matter what you need to get done with archives, this application lets you do it fast and easy.
The Bad One would be pretty hard pressed to come up with any real shortcomings to this application. The only thing that comes to mind is that since it scans archives when you open them, it would have been nice if it kept that information to offer a centralized index of the contents of all your archives.
The Truth Springy is a perfect example of a great OS X application that gives you plenty of power but in a way that makes it a joy to use. Simply great software, that makes you wonder why every other application was not made this way.
Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge:
