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Pacifist Changelog

What's new in Pacifist 4.1.0

Dec 7, 2023
  • Support for macOS Sonoma
  • Added a Spanish localization by Óscar Hérnandez
  • Performance improvements
  • Fixed a bug that could cause excess memory usage in some cases
  • Fixed a bug that could cause items not to extract correctly from Mac OS 9 Installation Tome archives
  • Other miscellaneous bug fixes

New in Pacifist 4.0.5 (Aug 24, 2022)

  • Added a button to access the license file, in the Preferences under the License tab
  • Improved performance when extracting images from asset catalogs
  • Fixed a bug that could cause extracted applications not to launch correctly in some cases
  • Fixed a bug that could cause packages not to open correctly in some rare cases
  • Fixed a bug that could cause installations to fail in some rare cases
  • Fixed a bug that could cause files to fail to extract from zip archives in some cases
  • Fixed some bugs that sometimes occurred when extracting from disk image files
  • Fixed a bug that could cause Pacifist not to stay hidden
  • Fixed some minor UI-related bugs
  • So what happened to version 4.0.4? Looks like it’s Not Found ;-)

New in Pacifist 4.0.3 (Feb 27, 2022)

  • Updated copyright date to 2022
  • Enabled pinch-to-zoom when viewing images and HTML pages
  • Added SVG as a viewable image type
  • Greatly improved performance and accuracy when loading asset catalogs
  • Arrange rendition images in asset catalogs in a more organized way
  • Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause crashes when viewing software update packages

New in Pacifist 4.0.2 (Jan 3, 2022)

  • Fixed a bug that sometimes caused crashes on Mojave
  • Fixed a bug that caused the QuickLook plugin to fail to load on High Sierra and earlier
  • Optimized zip file extraction for increased performance over HTTP
  • No longer pops up a warning sheet for an expired certificate
  • Fixed some bugs that could cause zip files not to extract properly in some cases
  • Fixed a bug that could cause an installer package not to open properly in rare cases
  • Restored the ability to open .jar files
  • Fixed a bug that could cause directories to be extracted with incorrect modification dates
  • Fixed some more obscure zip errors
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the Firefox plugin to erroneously show as not installed
  • Fixed a few issues that could lead to crashes in certain situations
  • Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause hangs on cancellation

New in Pacifist 4.0.1 (Nov 16, 2021)

  • Fixed a bug that caused crashes on some users’ machines
  • Fixed a bug that caused the browser plugins and/or the command-line tool not to install properly in some situations
  • Improved the appearance of the splash screen on non-Retina screens

New in Pacifist 4.0 (Nov 3, 2021)

  • Completely rewritten in Swift 5
  • Optimized for Apple Silicon
  • Redesigned, modernized UI
  • Full support for modern versions of macOS
  • Added command-line interface
  • Added browser plug-ins for Chrome and Firefox
  • Expanded support for analyzing existing installations, beyond simply kernel extensions
  • Support for Asset Catalog files
  • Support for Mac OS 9 Installation Tome files
  • Fixed some bugs that could cause certain packages not to open properly
  • Verify phase now correctly checks checksums for all file types, including symbolic links and Mach-O binary files
  • Added Preferences option to change the default setting of the “Use Administrator Privileges” check box
  • Added Preferences option to disable automatic opening in the Finder after extraction
  • Numerous performance optimizations
  • Too many other small improvements to list here

New in Pacifist 3.6.2 (Nov 4, 2019)

  • Added Catalina installer to the “Open Apple Installers” button
  • Notarized

New in Pacifist 3.6.1 (Oct 16, 2018)

  • Works around a bug in Mojave's productbuild that sometimes writes corrupt data into package files
  • Fixes a rare hanging bug when extracting from a small number of packages
  • Works around some other Mojave bugs (Thanks Apple!)

New in Pacifist 3.6 (Nov 1, 2017)

  • Fixed a bug that could cause Pacifist to fail to open packages that had been expanded and re-flattened on macOS 10.13 (“High Sierra”)
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes

New in Pacifist 3.5.13 (Aug 7, 2017)

  • Added support for the macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) installer
  • Fixed an issue that caused the Quick Start window not to display properly on OS X 10.8.x

New in Pacifist 3.5.12 (Dec 14, 2016)

  • Fixed a crash that was sometimes occurring on startup on machines with AMD graphics

New in Pacifist 3.5.11 (Oct 14, 2016)

  • Fixed a bug that could cause some files to fail verification when extracted from the Sierra installer
  • Fixed a bug that could cause crashes when extracting files from the Sierra installer
  • Some minor UI fixes

New in Pacifist 3.5.10 (Sep 19, 2016)

  • Support for macOS 10.12 “Sierra” and its installer
  • Minor localization fixes
  • Various other bug fixes

New in Pacifist 3.5.9 (Feb 1, 2016)

  • Fixed an issue that was causing crashes on versions of OS X earlier than 10.10

New in Pacifist 3.5.8 (Dec 28, 2015)

  • Fixed an issue that could sometimes prevent the search results drawer from opening on El Capitan

New in Pacifist 3.5.7 (Dec 17, 2015)

  • Fixed an issue that could cause symbolic links to be extracted with the incorrect destination

New in Pacifist 3.5.6 (Oct 30, 2015)

  • Fixed a crash that could happen when closing the Receipt Search window without actually doing a search
  • Fixed a bug that caused some receipts to be missed by the “Receipt Search” feature on El Capitan
  • Fixed a bug that caused the “Install to Other Disks…” feature not to work correctly
  • Fixed a cosmetic issue that could cause the focus ring not to be correctly displayed initially on El Capitan
  • Restored the context menu in the file browser
  • Made warning about the SIP mode in El Capitan more clear

New in Pacifist 3.5.5 (Sep 29, 2015)

  • Restored the Italian localization (thanks to Gabriele Callari)
  • Added a specific warning for when an attempted extraction is blocked by System Integrity Protection (Rootless) in OS X 10.11 “El Capitan”
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes

New in Pacifist 3.5.4 (Jul 25, 2015)

  • Fixed a few bugs that could occur while running on OS X “El Capitan”
  • Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur while searching the Resources tab of a package
  • Now loads Software Update packages much more quickly
  • Other miscellaneous bug fixes

New in Pacifist 3.5.3 (Apr 9, 2015)

  • Added support for XIP archives
  • “Extract Subpackages…” now works on disk images containing packages
  • Fixed a bug that could cause ZIP archives to fail to read in some circumstances
  • Fixed a bug that caused bare .bom files not to open correctly
  • Improved the speed of loading Software Update packages

New in Pacifist 3.5.2 (Feb 25, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug that caused Pacifist to fail to open Java .jar files
  • Fixed a bug that could cause Pacifist to incorrectly read a folder as an empty file in ZIP archives in rare cases
  • Improved performance when extracting the entirety of a large archive (like the Yosemite installer)
  • Fixed a bug that could cause modification dates of extracted folders to be incorrect
  • Fixed a bug where closing the search results drawer manually by dragging it in could cause the application to crash

New in Pacifist 3.5.1 (Feb 13, 2015)

  • Fixed a bug that sometimes caused exceptions to be thrown when extracting files from BaseSystemResources.pkg
  • Fixed a bug that sometimes caused spurious permissions errors when extracting from ZIP archives
  • Fixed a bug that sometimes caused exceptions to be thrown when loading archives from HTTP URLs
  • Double-clicking now works to select applications in the “Open Apple Installers” dialog box

New in Pacifist 3.5 (Feb 10, 2015)

  • Faster performance when loading packages
  • Much faster performance when extracting from OS X 10.10 “Yosemite” packages
  • Much better performance and efficiency when loading archives from HTTP URLs
  • Incorporated a new XAR extraction engine, written from scratch
  • Better performance when loading packages from HTTP URLs
  • Added detection of the Yosemite installer to the “Open Apple Installers” button
  • Now verifies the packages’ embedded signatures before opening them
  • Fixed a bug that caused resource forks not to extract properly from some .zip archives
  • Now uses HTTPS instead of HTTP for automatic updates, for greater security
  • Other miscellaneous bug fixes

New in Pacifist 3.2.17 (Sep 13, 2014)

  • Fixed a bug that caused some packages not to load properly

New in Pacifist 3.2.16 (Sep 4, 2014)

  • Fixed a bug that could affect the integrity of the extracted files when extracting symbolic links in rare cases

New in Pacifist 3.2.15 (Aug 6, 2014)

  • Fixed a bug that could cause spurious DiskArbitration errors when extracting certain files

New in Pacifist 3.2.14 (Jul 9, 2014)

  • Added experimental support for Mac OS X 10.10 (“Yosemite”) packages
  • Fixed a bug that caused errors on extracting from certain packages
  • Fixed a bug that could cause package scripts not to extract properly
  • Fixed a bug that could cause crashes during the “Verifying Files” stage for some packages
  • Fixed a bug that could cause false positives during the verification process
  • Fixed a bug that could cause errors on extracting files from archives with certain properties
  • Fixed a performance issue that could cause some packages to load slowly
  • Worked around an oddity in Apple’s install packages that caused some .icns files not to extract properly
  • Fixed a cosmetic issue affecting the display of checksums

New in Pacifist 3.2.13 (Jul 2, 2014)

  • Fixed a problem that could cause crashes while loading the OS X installer on OS X Lion

New in Pacifist 3.2.12 (Jun 5, 2014)

  • Fixed a problem that caused some packages not to load properly on OS X 10.6.8
  • Fixed a problem that could cause the “Please insert disk” dialog to appear spuriously in some cases

New in Pacifist 3.2.11 (Jun 3, 2014)

  • Fixed a crashing bug that could sometimes occur when closing packages
  • Fixed a crashing bug that could sometimes occur when opening lots of packages at once
  • Fixed a bug that could cause disk images not to open properly on OS X 10.6.8

New in Pacifist 3.2.10 (May 24, 2014)

  • Added support for the OS X 10.9.3 full installer
  • Fixed a bug that could cause crashes and other undesired behavior while extracting from .zip archives
  • Fixed a bug that caused the “Find” feature not to work properly for text files in the file viewer

New in Pacifist 3.2.9 (May 2, 2014)

  • Fixed an issue that could cause -[__NSCFCalendar components:fromDate:] warnings to get logged to the console when using languages other than English
  • Fixed an issue that could cause files inside packages that are in disk images hosted on an HTTP server not to extract properly
  • The QuickLook plug-in should now be able to handle .xar archives
  • Fixed an exception that could sometimes be thrown on extracting resources from a package
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when extracting files to a pre-Lion FileVault
  • Various security improvements

New in Pacifist 3.2.8 (Mar 20, 2014)

  • Fixed an issue that could cause errors when installing files on Mac OS X 10.6.x with administrator privileges

New in Pacifist 3.2.7 (Mar 19, 2014)

  • Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur when opening packages

New in Pacifist 3.2.6 (Mar 19, 2014)

  • Columns can now be sorted in the Resources tab
  • Fixed a bug that could cause certain packages to load incorrectly in rare instances
  • Various bug fixes

New in Pacifist 3.2.5 (Feb 4, 2014)

  • Fixed an issue that caused incomplete text to appear in the “Quick Start” window
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the splash screen to display incorrectly on machines with Intel Iris graphics (hopefully permanently this time)
  • Various internal architectural improvements
  • Various bug fixes

New in Pacifist 3.2.4 (Jan 6, 2014)

  • Enabled full-screen mode for a few more windows in the UI
  • Removed the URL from the Help Book so that Help Viewer should no longer access the Internet
  • Fixed a cosmetic issue involving the main window in the French and German localizations

New in Pacifist 3.2.3 (Dec 10, 2013)

  • Enabled full-screen mode on OS X 10.7 “Lion” and above
  • File viewer windows can now be closed via the space bar
  • Fixed a bug that caused the splash screen to be drawn incorrectly on machines with Intel Iris graphics
  • Fixed a crashing bug that could occur when trying to load an invalid .bom file
  • Pacifist should hopefully not cause the discrete GPU to be switched on anymore in MacBook Pros with dual GPUs

New in Pacifist 3.2.2 (Oct 30, 2013)

  • Fixed a bug in 3.2 that caused spurious “The update is improperly signed” errors on auto-update. If you are experiencing this problem, please download 3.2.2 manually by clicking here. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.
  • Fixed a bug that could cause files not to be extracted from certain packages
  • Fixed a bug that could cause incorrect installations with administrator privileges checked, when a package contained a relative URL
  • Fixed a bug that caused the “Install” button to be greyed out when viewing DMG files containing .pkg packages

New in Pacifist 3.2 (Oct 23, 2013)

  • Compatibility with OS X 10.9 “Mavericks” and its packages
  • Updated graphics for Retina Display
  • Converted to Objective-C ARC for greater efficiency and reliability
  • Rewrite the helper tool code for greater security
  • Made better use of concurrency for greatly improved performance
  • Now uses Notification Center on Mac OS X 10.8 and higher
  • Added support for Zip archives using Method 1 (Shrink) and Method 6 (Implode)
  • Fixed a bug which could cause errors on loading some packages
  • Fixed a rare crash which could occur while extracting files from some archives
  • Fixed a bug which could cause some spurious buttons to appear when using VoiceOver
  • Fixed a bug which could cause certain packages to fail to load
  • Improved performance when installing a large number of files
  • Fixed a bug which caused the Finder not to automatically reveal extracted files
  • Other miscellaneous bug fixes

New in Pacifist 3.0.10 (Oct 18, 2012)

  • Fixed a few crashing bugs
  • Fixed a few minor bugs that could cause some packages not to load properly
  • Fixed a bug that could cause RTFD files not to be viewable
  • Other minor bug fixes

New in Pacifist 3.0.9 (Aug 20, 2012)

  • Fixed a crashing bug
  • Fixed a bug that could cause some items to be installed in the wrong place
  • Fixed a bug that caused the disclosure triangles not to work in the QuickLook plug-in on Mountain Lion
  • Other minor bug fixes

New in Pacifist 3.0.8 (Jul 27, 2012)

  • Added support for OS X 10.8 “Mountain Lion” installer to “Open Apple Installers” button
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the “Show Software Update Packages” feature not to work on Mountain Lion

New in Pacifist 3.0.7 (Jul 17, 2012)

  • Fixed a bug that could cause Pacifist not to launch on Intel Macs running OS X 10.4.x

New in Pacifist 3.0.6 (Jul 11, 2012)

  • Fixed a bug that could cause loading distribution packages from non-file URLs not to work

New in Pacifist 3.0.5 (Jun 28, 2012)

  • Fixed a minor permissions issue in the 3.0.4 distribution

New in Pacifist 3.0.4 (Jun 27, 2012)

  • Fixed a bug that could cause packages from versions of OS X older than 10.2 not to load
  • Fixed a bug that could cause spurious error messages on extracting the entirety of a mpkg
  • Fixed another Mountain Lion-specific bug
  • Got rid of some deprecated API usage

New in Pacifist 3.0.3 (Jun 19, 2012)

  • Now uses code-signing information to prune extraneous files out of applications extracted using the “Search Receipts” feature
  • General improvements and bug fixes to the “Search Receipts” feature
  • Several Mountain Lion-related fixes
  • Fixed a bug that affected loading some Apple install discs such as Final Cut Studio and Logic Pro
  • Fixed a few crashing bugs
  • All files in the .zip distribution of Pacifist are now free of resource forks and extended attributes, to keep third-party .zip unarchivers from failing to unarchive the extended attributes properly and invalidating Pacifist’s code signing
  • Text is now selectable in HTML files in the viewer
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes

New in Pacifist 3.0.2 (Mar 1, 2012)

  • Updated code signature for compatibility with OS X 10.8 “Mountain Lion” and Gatekeeper
  • Fixed a crash that could occur if Pacifist was unable to install the QuickLook plug-in
  • Added the ability to ask for admin privileges to install the QuickLook plug-in if necessary
  • Now automatically checks the default application for .pkg, .mpkg, and .dmg files on startup and sets them back to Installer and DiskImageMounter respectively if they have inadvertently become assigned to Pacifist
  • Fixed a bug that caused a few outline-view keyboard shortcuts not to work properly
  • Fixed a rare bug that could cause a package to load incorrectly

New in Pacifist 3.0.1 (Feb 9, 2012)

  • Suppressed a number of “Duplicate XML Element” errors when loading some packages
  • Fixed a few crashing bugs
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the QuickLook plugin not to work on some systems
  • Using the “View” function on text files should now cause them to open in a standard text view like in 2.6.x instead of in the QuickLook viewer as in 3.0, allowing them to be selectable and searchable
  • Fixed a bug that could cause dates not to appear correctly in the verification reports
  • Fixed a bug that could cause resources not to load properly for packages inside disk images

New in Pacifist 3.0 (Jan 21, 2012)

  • Compiled as a Universal Binary for full speed on Intel-based Macs
  • Lets you install individual items or folders from .pkg packages, either to their default install locations or to a custom location you specify
  • Allows you to install to a disk other than the boot disk if you prefer
  • Works with the new Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” package format as well as packages from older Mac OS X versions ranging from Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger” to the Mac OS X Public Beta
  • Supports .pkg packages, .mpkg metapackages, .zip archives, .bom file listings, .dmg disk images, and .pax, .pax.gz, .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .cpio, .cpio.gz, .cpio.bz2, and .xar archives
  • Support for .zip archives with extensive format support - should correctly extract Mac and UNIX metadata from Apple’s Zip format as well as MacZip, SmartZip, ZipIt, and InfoZip archives. In order to achieve support for all these formats as well as the “Open URL” feature, Pacifist has a new Zip parser written completely from scratch rather than using existing functionality such as the ‘zip’ command-line tool.
  • A new “Open URL” feature makes it possible to remotely load archives over the network. For .zip, .xar, .dmg, and Leopard .pkg packages, this feature only downloads the portion of the file which is necessary to read it, causing files to open much more quickly than it would take to download the whole archive (.zip files, in particular, are very fast - try it!).
  • All files in a package can be viewed right in Pacifist using of a new “View Files” feature. The “View Files” feature includes support for various text and image file types, as well as support for RTF, RTFD, HTML, MS Word, and property list files. Pacifist also includes a new hexadecimal file viewer for viewing binary files and unknown file types.
  • Includes the ability to verify existing intallations, comparing the files on your hard disk with the files listed in the package, and notifying you of missing files as well as files that have different permissions or checksums than those listed in the package*
  • Follows all symlinks and aliases properly, without overwriting them
  • Doesn’t alter the properties of existing folders, including their permissions
  • Correctly gives the sizes of a package, both compressed and uncompressed
  • Displays the following information about files in packages: path, size, kind, owner, group, permissions, modification date, checksum
  • Allows the user to selectively choose whether or not to display certain types of metadata
  • Inspector window gives a more detailed look at files in a package
  • Displays total size of currently selected files, letting you know exactly how much space your installation will take on your hard disk. Dynamically updates this size as the selection changes.
  • Includes the ability to view a package’s resources, such as the Read Me file, the install scripts, etc.
  • Correctly sets all file owner and permission settings
  • Allows the user to override a package’s authentication requirement
  • Automatically converts AppleDouble files into resource forks and metadata when installing on HFS+ disks (leaves the files alone if installing on UFS)
  • Automatically updates prebinding information after installation to optimize system performance (disabled by default on Mac OS X 10.4 and higher)
  • Allows the user to create receipts for .pkg packages
  • It is possible to cancel the extraction at any stage of the installation
  • Multiple-document interface
  • Multi-threaded
  • Has a working search feature
  • Supports drag and drop
  • Supports contextual menus
  • Commonly used functions available via toolbar
  • Auto filename completion
  • Works with compressed or uncompressed packages
  • By default, prompts before replacing any files
  • Uses the Security Framework if the files will need to be installed as root
  • If you install a folder and the folder already exists, Pacifist installs the folder’s contents and doesn’t overwrite the parent folder. The exception is application bundles, which by default will ask you what to do.
  • Works around a bug in pax so that hard links extract from packages correctly instead of generating “File not found” errors
  • Spiffy icons by Adam Betts
  • Czech localization by Lukáš Vajda
  • Dutch localization by Koen van Hees
  • French localization by Ronald Leroux
  • German localization by Sebastian Krauß, Martin Bestmann, Goetz Goerisch, and Norbert Rittel
  • Italian localization by Gabriele Callari
  • Japanese localization by Takehiko Hatatani

New in Pacifist 2.6.3 (Sep 1, 2009)

  • Worked around an oversight in Snow Leopard’s Finder that caused drag-and-drop to the Finder not to work properly.

New in Pacifist 2.6.2 (Sep 1, 2009)

  • Fixed a bug inadvertently added in 2.6.1 that caused hangs at the "Verifying Files" stage.

New in Pacifist 2.6.1 (Aug 27, 2009)

  • Fixed a bug which could cause the Kernel Extension Report feature not to work properly under Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

New in Pacifist 2.6 (Aug 14, 2009)

  • Compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”,
  • Added a QuickLook plug-in,
  • Added Simplified Chinese localization by Yunxuan He,
  • Added support for PKZIP, WinZip, and Info-Zip self-extracting .zip archives,
  • Added support for Zip64 archives,
  • Added support for bzip2-compressed .zip archives,
  • While extracting, the Verification phase is much faster,
  • The Verification phase is now optional and can be disabled in the preferences,
  • fixed a bug that caused .xar, .pkg, and .zip files on some HTTP servers not to load properly,
  • Fixed a crashing bug that could occur while viewing packages with no resources,
  • Fixed a bug that caused some Leopard flat packages not to be read properly,
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the Logic Studio 9 discs to fail to load,
  • Fixed a few bugs that could cause spurious errors when extracting files from pre-Leopard packages,
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the resource forks not to be written properly for some files in pre-Leopard packages,
  • Fixed a bug that could cause symlinks to be extracted with an incorrect path content or omitted entirely,
  • Fixed a crashing bug that could occur while opening .zip files,
  • Fixed a bug that could cause the window for the image view to appear at an incorrect size,
  • Made some corrections to the localizations,
  • Miscellaneous bug fixes.