Ashampoo Zip Free is a rare exception, with a clear interface and an optional touch mode with larger, tap-friendly icons. Many free Winzip alternatives hide their best features behind a complex system of menus. The only key feature it's missing is the ability to repair damaged archives - other than that, it's a truly exceptional program. You can apply password protection to packaged archives and split them into volumes, which is handy for sharing particularly large archives. 7-Zip can also create self-extracting 7z archives. Its own 7z format is designed for high compression, and is supported by almost all file archiving tools – both paid-for and free – making it an ideal choice for sharing. You can locate files to be archived using a simple Windows Explorer-style file tree, or drag and drop them into the main window. It's only 1MB in size, and can pack and unpack just about any compressed file archive you can throw at it.ħ-Zip isn't the most attractive WinZip alternative around, but it's so well designed that you won't miss the slick interfaces of its paid-for equivalents. In the near future, this is about to change since the company has recently announced that it’s integrating the libarchive open-source project to bring support for tar, RAR, 7-zip, TAR, GZ, and many other formats to Windows 11.Īlthough this is good news for users, it’s not a piece of pleasant news for companies like WinRAR that have been doing business with dedicated applications to manage archive formats.7-Zip is open source, meaning it's completely free, even for commercial use. Currently, whether you use File Explorer, Command Prompt, or PowerShell, it’s only possible to compress or uncompress Zipped folders, and if you have to open other archive formats, you need third-party tools, such as 7-zip or WinRAR. Microsoft has announced that soon Windows 11 will incorporate support for RAR, 7-zip, TAR, GZ, and many other archive formats natively. The new support should start rolling out soon as a preview to Insiders.

This means no more installing third-party apps to open RAR, 7-zip, TAR, and GZ files.

Microsoft to bring support for more archive formats to Windows 11.

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