Windows 11 RAR Files Support
Microsoft announced a slew of updates, including a minor yet helpful feature that can resolve the headache of many Windows users. The OS is finally going to have the ability to work with various kinds of archives, including RAR, 7-zip, and .tar, after two decades.
It is still a work in progress but it will be added later this week. Before it will be rolled out to the general public, it may be exclusive to the Windows Insider preview.
“We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project. You now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows.” – Windows
Why this is Relevant?
Built-in support for these archive types will be relevant for many people who utilize the Windows Subsystem for Linux and those who don’t want to pay for third-party apps.
Most Windows users utilize RAR because of its high compression ratio. It can significantly reduce the size of files or folders. It is especially useful when transferring or storing large amounts of data, as it helps in saving storage space and speeds up file transfers.
Windows does not natively support the extraction or creation of RAR files, which are compressed archives created by the WinRAR software. However, there are several third-party software options available for Windows that can handle RAR files.
One popular option is WinRAR itself, which is a paid software but offers a trial version for free. It provides full support for RAR files, allowing you to extract files from RAR archives and create new RAR archives.
Another widely used alternative is 7-Zip, which is a free and open-source file archiver. 7-Zip supports a variety of formats, including RAR, and allows you to extract files from RAR archives. However, it does not provide the ability to create RAR archives since the RAR compression format is proprietary.
Additionally, there are other third-party file compression utilities available for Windows that can handle RAR files, such as PeaZip and Bandizip. These tools offer support for various compression formats, including RAR, and provide both extraction and creation functionalities.
Bye-Bye Third-Party Apps
With this upcoming update, you no longer have to install third-party apps just to access these compressed files. The support will be handled by the open-source libarchive project.
The file types that can be compressed and extracted may need to match the list on libarchive. It will also handle zip files in Windows. Compared to third-party apps, decompressing large zip archives is a bit slower when using Windows’ native tools.
But do people still need it? After all, WinRAR and similar apps have diminished. Drive capacity and network bandwidth have increased. Previously, it would take hours to download a handful of MB. Furthermore, open-source standards have proliferated.
Should You Cancel Your WinRAR Trial?
You may want to consider it. But if you have not updated to Windows 11, yet, you could not take advantage of the particular integration. WinRAR, however, can support a ton of tile formats.
