Your first ten minutes with TSR

Install

Download the package for your system from the download page. On macOS move TSR.app to Applications; on Windows unzip it in a folder of yours, outside Program Files; on Linux unpack the tarball and start tsr-gui. Placed there, the program updates itself.

On first launch macOS and Windows warn you because the programs are not yet signed with their certificates: the download page explains how to open them.

Read the terms, choose the diagnostics

TSR shows the terms of the beta channel: they must be accepted to compress, while opening and extracting archives always works. Then it asks whether you want to send us crash reports and usage metrics, two separate choices you can change at any time in the preferences.

Compress a folder

Drag a folder or some files onto the window, or use Compress folder or Compress files. The question How much time do you want to spend compressing? opens, with five levels from Fastest to Slowest.

Next to each level TSR shows duration, archive size and extraction time, estimated on a sample of your files and on this machine; two levels that would give the same archive share a row, and at the bottom you can type the seconds. The estimates are cautious: the real result is almost always better.

In the same window you can choose Protect with a password (encrypts contents AND file names) and Protect against damage (the archive repairs itself). The password cannot be recovered: without it, encrypted data stays locked forever.

Open the archive without extracting it

Drag the .tsr file onto the window or use Open archive. The list sorts with a click on the header; a click on a name previews text and images, a double-click opens the file as a stream, without extracting anything. Where the space goes shows which folders and which file types fill the archive.

To take files out use Extract selected or Extract all. Every file comes out identical byte for byte to what went in.

Add files later

Add files adds to the archive without rewriting the data already there; a file with the same path as one inside replaces it. Files gone from the disk stay in the archive: that is the point of having one.

Verify, and repair if needed

Verify integrity checks every block against its fingerprint and says which file is damaged. If the archive has damage protection, Repair puts the damaged bytes back into a new file next to the original, which is left untouched, and it works without the password too.

Parity goes from 1 to 30% from the command line; it repairs any damage that fits within the chosen quota.