WinRAR

About this release

WinRAR has been on more Windows machines than almost any other utility, and the reason is simple: it opens everything, it compresses well, and it has never broken anything. The RAR format it created remains one of the best general purpose compressors available, and the extraction side reads every archive format anyone is likely to send you.

The recovery record is the feature that earns it a permanent place on a machine that moves large files. Adding a few percent of redundancy to an archive means that a corrupted transfer can often be repaired rather than repeated, which on multi gigabyte sets is the difference between a minor delay and starting over.

Splitting is the other reason it stays installed. Very large sets divide into equal volumes that can be moved separately and reassembled anywhere, with the split points chosen by size, by target medium or by a manual figure. Solid archives push compression ratios higher on collections of similar files.

The interface is a plain file browser with a toolbar, plus deep integration into the shell context menu so most work never opens the application at all. Command line support means the same operations script cleanly for backups and automated packaging.

What it does

Recovery record

Adds redundancy so a damaged archive can often be repaired instead of re downloaded.

Volume splitting

Divide a large set into equal parts and reassemble anywhere.

Solid compression

Higher ratios on collections of similar files.

Reads everything

Extracts every archive format in common circulation, not just its own.

Shell integration

Compress and extract from the context menu without opening the application.

Command line

Scriptable for backups and automated packaging.

Changed in this version

• Faster compression on high core count processors.
• Improved handling of very large volume sets.
• Fixed an extraction issue with certain nested archives.
• Interface scaling corrected on high density displays.
• Additional language files updated.

System requirements

Install order

1. Unpack the archive.
2. Run the installer and choose which file types to associate.
3. Enable shell integration on the options screen if you want context menu entries.
4. Set a default compression profile for the kind of files you handle most.

Worth knowing before you start

File details