MacBinary
group of related file formats
MacBinary is a file format that combines the data fork and the resource fork of a classic Mac OS file into a single file, along with HFS's extended metadata. The resulting file is suitable for transmission over FTP, the World Wide Web, and electronic mail. The documents can also be stored on computers that run operating systems with no HFS support, such as Unix or Windows.
MacBinary was widely supported on the Macintosh and was built into most communications programs on that platform. Similar solutions were built into most data compression applications on the Mac, and although these did not require MacBinary to survive transmission across non-Mac systems, MacBinary was often added in these cases to preserve longer filenames and other features.
The dual-fork nature of the HFS system was not used on Mac OS X, and MacBinary has largely disappeared. The Mac OS X tool macbinary can encode and decode MacBinary files.
Description
In contrast to other computers of the era, Macintosh applications included both computer code as well as a large number of resources that were used by the operating system (OS) itself. These resources were also widely used in documents to store rich media like sounds and images. However, the resource system had the significant limitation that the maximum size of any single resource was only 32 kB, far too small for storing document data.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “MacBinary” as group of related file formats. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as group of related file formats. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1882400. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “MacBinary” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.