---
id: patool
version: "4.0.5"
license: GPL-3
license_treatment: copyleft
maintenance: active
---

# patool — portable archive file manager

License: copyleft · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 1.4M/mo

## What it is and what it does

Patool is a portable archive manager that unifies the command-line interface for working with many archive formats. Instead of remembering separate tools and flags for 7z, ACE, ADF, ALZIP, APE, AR, ARC, ARJ, BZIP2, BZIP3, CAB, CHM, COMPRESS, CPIO, DEB, DMS, FLAC, FREEARC, GZIP, ISO, LRZIP, LZH, LZIP, LZMA, LZOP, RPM, RAR, RZIP, SHN, TAR, UDF, XZ, ZIP, ZOO, and ZSTANDARD, you use a single set of commands to extract, create, test, list, search, repack, and compare archives. It determines the archive format automatically using the file(1) program and falls back to file extension matching.

The package includes both a command-line tool and a Python API. Natively it supports TAR, ZIP, BZIP2, LZMA, and GZIP without external dependencies; other formats require their respective helper applications to be installed on the system. It has no Python runtime dependencies, making it lightweight to install, and is actively maintained with unit tests run on each code push.

Use it for:

- Extract multiple archives in different formats with a single command instead of switching between tools.
- Test archive integrity before deployment or distribution.
- Search for text patterns inside compressed archives without manually extracting them first.
- Convert or repack an archive from one format to another (e.g., tar.gz to tar.bz2).
- List files stored in an archive to inspect contents before extraction.
- Handle password-protected archives from the command line.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Patool is a command-line archive manager that can create, extract, test, list, search, repack, and compare archives in many formats with a unified interface.

Yes, if you work with multiple archive formats and want a unified interface. The package is stable, actively maintained, has no Python dependencies, and supports a wide range of formats. The main constraint is that less common formats require their helper applications to be installed separately. GPL-3 licensing is acceptable for most use cases but requires compliance if you redistribute or modify the code.

## Install

pip install patool
uv add patool
poetry add patool

## Installing patool

Before you install: Low friction: pure Python wheel with no runtime dependencies. Actively maintained with recent commits and a stable release cycle. Requires Python 3.11 or later.

License in practice: Licensed under GPL-3 (copyleft). Any derivative work or distribution must comply with GPL v3 terms, including source code disclosure.

Quickstart:

pip install patool

patool extract archive.zip
patool list package.tar.gz
patool test dist.tar.gz

Helper applications (xz, rar, 7z, etc.) must be installed on the system to handle their respective archive formats; TAR, ZIP, BZIP2, LZMA, and GZIP are supported natively.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package can reliably auto-detect archive format when file extension is ambiguous or missing.
- Performance characteristics when handling very large archives or deeply nested directory structures.
- Compatibility with password-protected archives across all supported formats.

## Package facts

- License: GPL-3 (copyleft)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 1.4M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

archive manager command line, extract multiple archive formats, unified archive tool, tar zip rar extraction, archive compression utility, batch archive operations, cross-format archive handling, archive-management, command-line-tool, compression

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/patool) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/patool/)