Painless compression and decompression in the terminal - handles many formats.
Ouch! (Obvious Unified Compression Helper) is a CLI tool designed to simplify compression and decompression operations across multiple archive formats. It automatically detects file formats based on extensions and provides an intuitive interface for working with compressed files without needing to remember specific syntax for different archive tools.
The tool supports an extensive range of formats including ZIP, TAR, 7Z, GZIP, XZ, LZMA, LZ4, Brotli, Zstandard, RAR, and many others. It can handle format chaining (like .tar.gz.xz.zst) and offers parallel compression for supported formats to improve performance. Ouch provides three main commands: compress, decompress, and list, with helpful aliases and clear error messages.
Ouch is targeted at developers, system administrators, and anyone who regularly works with compressed files and wants a unified tool instead of juggling multiple compression utilities. It focuses on ergonomics and accessibility, offering features like tree-formatted archive listings, shell completions, man pages, and an accessibility mode for users with disabilities.
# via Homebrew
brew install ouch
# via Cargo
cargo install ouch
# via Arch Linux
pacman -S ouch