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# Apple Archive

Perform multithreaded lossless compression of directories, files, and data.

## Overview

Apple Archive provides fast compression that includes file attributes, such as, ownership, permissions, flags, times, extended attributes, and error correction. Apple Archive offers these features:

- Multithreaded processing that uses all cores, is energy efficient, and yields faster results
- An ability to transport files and their attributes and use Apple File System (APFS) features when they’re available, for example, filesystem compression, full clones, and sparse files
- Flexible encoding formats, so you can use archives, for example, for error correction, digests, manifests, and external data storage
- API support for in-memory archive processing, streaming access, random access, and back-to-back archive and extraction

## Topics

### Apple Archive essentials

  <doc://com.apple.documentation/documentation/Accelerate/compressing-single-files>

  <doc://com.apple.documentation/documentation/Accelerate/decompressing-single-files>

  <doc://com.apple.documentation/documentation/Accelerate/compressing-file-system-directories>

  <doc://com.apple.documentation/documentation/Accelerate/decompressing-and-extracting-an-archived-directory>

  <doc://com.apple.documentation/documentation/Accelerate/compressing-and-saving-a-string-to-the-file-system>

  <doc://com.apple.documentation/documentation/Accelerate/decompressing-and-parsing-an-archived-string>

### Apple Encrypted Archive essentials

[Encrypting and Decrypting a String](/documentation/AppleArchive/encrypting-and-decrypting-a-string)

Encrypt the contents of a string and save the result to the file system, then decrypt and recreate the string from the archive file using Apple Encrypted Archive.

[Encrypting and Decrypting a Single File](/documentation/AppleArchive/encrypting-and-decrypting-a-single-file)

Encrypt a single file and save the result to the file system, then decrypt and recreate the original file from the archive file using Apple Encrypted Archive.

[Encrypting and Decrypting Directories](/documentation/AppleArchive/encrypting-and-decrypting-directories)

Compress and encrypt the contents of an entire directory or decompress and decrypt an archived directory  using Apple Encrypted Archive.

[`ArchiveEncryptionContext`](/documentation/AppleArchive/ArchiveEncryptionContext)

An object that encapsulates all parameters, keys, and data necessary to open an encrypted archive for both encryption and decryption streams.

### Apple Archive headers

[`ArchiveHeader`](/documentation/AppleArchive/ArchiveHeader)

An AppleArchive entry header.

### Apple Archive streams

[`ArchiveStreamProtocol`](/documentation/AppleArchive/ArchiveStreamProtocol)

A set of methods that defines the interface for using an archive stream that reads from and writes to data blobs.

[`ArchiveStream`](/documentation/AppleArchive/ArchiveStream)

An archive stream that reads from and writes to data blobs

[`ArchiveByteStreamProtocol`](/documentation/AppleArchive/ArchiveByteStreamProtocol)

A set of methods that defines the interface for using an archive stream that reads from and writes to buffers.

[`ArchiveByteStream`](/documentation/AppleArchive/ArchiveByteStream)

An archive stream that reads from and writes to buffers.

### Apple Archive errors

[`ArchiveError`](/documentation/AppleArchive/ArchiveError)

Error codes for AppleArchive.

### Constants

[`APPLE_ARCHIVE_API_VERSION`](/documentation/AppleArchive/APPLE_ARCHIVE_API_VERSION)

The version of the framework at compile time.

### Reference

[Apple Archive structures](/documentation/AppleArchive/apple-archive-structures)

### Reference

[Apple Archive structures](/documentation/AppleArchive/apple-archive-structures)

[Apple Archive data types](/documentation/AppleArchive/apple-archive-data-types)

[Apple Archive functions](/documentation/AppleArchive/apple-archive-functions)

[Apple Archive macros](/documentation/AppleArchive/apple-archive-macros)

## See Also

  <doc://com.apple.documentation/documentation/Foundation/about-apple-file-system>


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