Terminal file compression toolkit with an interactive menu, safe extraction defaults and built-in learning tools
Boa turns everyday archiving into a single short command. Instead of memorizing flags for tar, zip or 7z, you type bo and an interactive terminal menu walks you through the job: compress a folder, open an archive, convert one format to another. It is built for people who already live in the terminal and want the boring parts of archiving handled for them.
The design leans on safe defaults. Compression uses DEFLATE by default, skips pointless re-compression of already-compressed media by switching to Store, and offers Zstd when you want a modern algorithm. Extraction inspects every entry for path traversal, absolute paths and suspicious symlinks before writing a single byte to disk - the class of attack known as Zip Slip. The media wizard treats lossless optimization as the default and only applies lossy compression after you explicitly agree to it.
Boa also doubles as a teaching tool: bo learn explains archiving concepts to beginners, bo bench benchmarks size and speed before you commit to a format, and dry-run mode shows exactly what a command would do without touching the disk. It ships as a single MIT-licensed binary with no accounts or telemetry, for macOS, Linux and Windows.
We covered how it works in practice in our article: https://www.freewares.org/blog/boa-compress-files-from-your-terminal
bo covers compress, extract, inspect and convert from a single entry point
Bubble Tea prompts guide every operation with clear confirmations
DEFLATE by default, Store for pre-compressed files, Zstd on demand
Encrypt ZIP and 7z archives with a password
No. Typing bo opens an interactive menu that walks you through compress, extract, inspect and convert operations step by step, so no tar, zip or 7z syntax is required.
DEFLATE by default. It switches to Store for files that are already compressed, and you can ask for Zstd when you want a modern algorithm. bo bench helps you compare before choosing.
Boa checks every entry for path traversal, absolute paths and dangerous symlinks before writing to disk, blocking the Zip Slip class of attacks.