Windows finally adds native support for RAR files

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,256   +192
Staff member
In a nutshell: More than three decades after its introduction, Microsoft has finally added native support for RAR files to Windows. The proprietary file archive format debuted in 1993 courtesy of Russian software engineer Eugene Roshal. Like ZIP, RAR – short for Roshal Archive – supports data compression but additionally adds error correction and file spanning capabilities to the equation. It is the latter functionality that most people likely remember RAR for.

In the earlier days of online file sharing before speedy Internet connections, RAR file spanning was commonly used to split large downloads like games or programs into several smaller chunks. This made them easier to acquire over slower connections. Once you had all of the individual pieces, a program like WinRAR was used to reconstruct the file to its original state.

If something happened during the download process, you simply re-downloaded that one piece instead of having to wipe the slate and download the entire file all over again.

At its annual developer conference this week, Microsoft quietly announced it has added native support for additional file formats including RAR, 7-zip, tar, and gz to Windows 11 using the libarchive open-source project.

Admittedly, native RAR support coming to Windows is not as big of a deal now as it would have been decades ago. Today's speedy Internet connections mean it takes minutes or hours to download large files instead of days. What's more, streaming has provided a viable and legal alternative to piracy for in-demand media without having to worry about the risk of infection. I personally can't remember the last time I interacted with a RAR file, but perhaps I am in the minority?

Microsoft is also very late to the game as other operating systems like ChromeOS have long since supported the format. But as they say, better late than never, eh?

Those on earlier versions of Windows still have plenty of alternatives when dealing with RAR files. If WinRAR isn't your jam, perhaps something like PeaZip or Zipeg would be worth a look. Both are free, support many formats, and are readily available to download.

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So, M$ is going to add an already free program to Windows 11. Not to mention they're trying to pass this off as a "favor" to users. I don't know about you guys, but it makes me want to run right out and buy two copies.

OTOH, will M$ receive telemetry on every "erotic art file", I decompress? That would suck, big time, with "Big Brother", getting a fix on every file sharing site on the web..
 
I use winrar instead of 7z because of the UI, while 7z is much better in terms of performance and compression, it is not very nice looking
I don't decompress files for fun, otherwise, I may care more about the UI.... or maybe if I was spending time in the app and doing different things each time (which I would appreciate an "intuitive" UI). Honestly, when I have an archive, I usually right-click to extract (or right-click/hold and drag/release). However, WinRAR wins for creating archives... especially when setting a password, using volumes, etc.

My point was more about using PeaZip or Zipeg. I've been heavy into PCs and hardware since as far back as the Cyrix 586 days and never known anyone to use those two over 7zip (which is free and minimal).
 
I bought a full WinRAR license many years ago and I've been using it assiduously. Better than 7zip and Winzip.
 
I use winrar instead of 7z because of the UI, while 7z is much better in terms of performance and compression, it is not very nice looking
I use RAR (for the last 20+ years) as the go-to compressor, fast and good compression. I also have it accessible to TotalCommander as default compressor. And not only do I use file division many times, in those cases I include recovery records and recovery files, as precautionary measures, they are data to be archived for a long time.

I use 7zip separately, when I need to archive in the smallest possible space, without using esoteric compressors.Sometimes I have compressed with 7zip into a single big archive, and then divided with Winrar into parts, adding 5% recovery data in each piece and some extra parts to recover badly damaged files.

And I only use the winrar UI for its first configuration and to recover lost or error files.
 
So, M$ is going to add an already free program to Windows 11. Not to mention they're trying to pass this off as a "favor" to users. I don't know about you guys, but it makes me want to run right out and buy two copies.

OTOH, will M$ receive telemetry on every "erotic art file", I decompress? That would suck, big time, with "Big Brother", getting a fix on every file sharing site on the web..
The winrar decompression algorithm is free, but the compression is not.
I think Microsoft would only include decompression, unless they reached an agreement with the developer
 
Funny timing. I ran into a .rar file download the other day for the first time in a decade or two. I downloaded 7z and extracted the files without drama, but I'm surprised the format has survived.

Typically I just use the built-in "Send to compressed folder" and extract features that have been a feature of Windows Explorer for years.
 
This is like 10 years ago, when all the car stereos had support for MP3 and WMA, but none of them supported OGG. Which was very strange, since OGG is superior in quality, size and IT'S FREE. You don't have to pay any royalties to implement a player. For MP3 you have to.

So, it was pretty clear that MP3 consortium offered a discount to those manufacturers who implement MP3 but not OGG.

The question is: why Windows still doesn't support 7zip?
 
Huh I never knew what .RAR stood for. Interesting!

In fact, RAR still sees frequent use. You go to those sites... you know the ones I mean... and they'll have links to files on these various cloud storage services, almost univerally using 5GB segmented RAR files since these services tend to have a 5GB file size limit.
 
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