Windows 11 getting native support for 7-Zip, RAR, and GZ

[Demon_Skeith]

In a new blog post, Microsoft's Chief Product Officer, Panos Panay, described these new features and when they would become available to the general public.

As first spotted by TheVerge, hidden in a section discussing a new Windows 11 developer feature called Dev Home, Panay mentioned that Windows 11 would soon have native support for RAR, 7-Zip, and gz archives.

"We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-Zip, RAR, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project," explains Panay in today's blog post.

"You now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows."

On Windows, ZIP, 7-Zip, and RAR are all popular archive formats, with ZIP being the most widely used among them.

Microsoft integrated ZIP archives support into Windows in 1998. However, to manipulate 7-Zip (.7z), RAR (.rar), or gz (.gz) archives, you would need to install third-party applications.

Though 7-Zip is free and open-source, and WinRar offers a 40-day trial that never ends, becoming somewhat of a joke in the techie world, having native support for these file formats will be very useful for Windows users.

Source

 

[Grungie]

That’s be nice, like when Windows 8 first had built in ISO mounting capabilities.

 

[Artisan Vistra]

Too late. I already have those. Maybe it would allow me to free up space?

 

[Demon_Skeith]

I'm still sticking with 7zip, it has a bit of magic to it.

 

[cm2]

I like 7zip too.

 

[froggyboy604]

It is nice that Windows 11 now support 7Zip, Rar, and Gz.

I feel I will stick to 7-Zip because I am used to the user interface.