Archive Desk Lite: Zip / VSIX / JAR / Tar Viewer (Offline)

Browse and open files inside zip / jar / vsix / tar / tar.gz / tgz without extracting. Everything is pure JavaScript and designed for Remote-SSH, WSL, Dev Containers and Codespaces (Remote smoke testing is still pending).

Tree view. Right-click an archive and choose Open in Archive Desk. The archive shows up in the Archive Desk view in the Explorer.
Read-only editor tabs. Click any entry to open it in a normal VS Code tab, with syntax highlighting picked from its file name. Nothing is extracted to disk.
Safe extract. Extract one entry, a folder, or everything to a folder you choose. Paths that try to escape the target folder (zip-slip, ../) are blocked.
Large-archive guard. Archives bigger than archiveDesk.largeArchiveWarningMB (default 200 MB) ask before loading, because they are read into memory.
No system binaries. It never calls unzip, tar or 7z. It has no network access, no telemetry and no AI.

Free vs Pro

Feature	Lite (free)	Pro ($12 one-time)
Tree browse for zip/jar/vsix/tar/tar.gz/tgz	✓	✓
Open entries read-only with syntax highlighting	✓	✓
Extract an entry, a folder or everything, with path-safety	✓	✓
Diff two archives (added/removed/changed, plus side-by-side diff)	—	✓
Search text across all entries (plain or regex)	—	✓
Size breakdown (per-entry compressed/uncompressed, by folder)	—	✓
Edit an entry and repack (verified, save-as-new or overwrite with .bak, roll back)	—	✓

Pro is a separate add-on: Buy Archive Desk Pro — $12 one-time. Lite itself contains no purchase prompts.

Note: Extract All writes safe entries, then aborts when it reaches an unsafe path (zip-slip is blocked; nothing is written outside the target folder).

Limits

Supported formats: zip-family (zip, jar, vsix, war), tar, tar.gz/tgz. Not supported: 7z, rar, bz2, xz, or encrypted/password-protected zips.
The whole archive is read into memory. Entries that look binary show a note and should be extracted instead.
Lite is read-only and never modifies an archive.

Privacy & support

Archive Desk Lite works fully offline and collects nothing. Support: bhamlefty@gmail.com · Zecro LLC