WinRAR

About this release

WinRAR is a small program that has outlived almost everything it competed with, and the reason is that it does one job without ever surprising you. It opens every archive format you are likely to meet, it creates the two that everyone else can open, and it has never broken a file. Three decades of that adds up to a level of trust that no newer tool has managed to take from it.

Reading, it handles RAR, ZIP, 7Z, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2, XZ, ZSTD, ISO, CAB, ARJ, LZH, ACE, UUE and a long tail of formats that only appear when someone hands you something from twenty years ago. Writing, it produces RAR and ZIP, which is the correct answer, because those are the two that will open on the other end without a conversation about what to install first.

The features that matter on large files are the ones people forget about until they need them. Recovery records let a damaged archive repair itself, which turns a corrupted transfer from a re-download into a thirty second fix. Solid compression treats the whole set as one stream and gets meaningfully smaller results on many similar files. Split volumes cut an archive into fixed size parts for transfer, and the reassembly is automatic when you open the first part. Encryption covers both the contents and the file names, so an encrypted archive does not even reveal what is inside it.

Around all that sits the part you actually touch: shell integration that puts extract here and add to archive on the right click menu, drag and drop into and out of an open archive, a repair command, an archive tester, a comment field, and a command line version bundled for scripting a backup or an automated packaging step.

What you get

• Reads RAR, ZIP, 7Z, TAR, GZIP, BZIP2, XZ, ZSTD, ISO, CAB, ARJ, LZH, ACE and more
• Creates RAR and ZIP archives with selectable compression level and dictionary size
• Recovery records that let a damaged archive repair itself without a re-download
• Solid compression for much smaller results across many similar files
• Split volumes with automatic reassembly when the first part is opened
• Encryption of both contents and file names with the whole listing hidden
• Shell integration with extract here, extract to folder and add to archive on the context menu
• Self extracting archives with optional path, prompt and post extraction command
• Archive testing and repair commands plus a benchmark for tuning settings
• Command line version bundled for scripting backups and automated packaging

Changes in this build

• Faster extraction of large ZSTD compressed archives
• Improved recovery on multi volume sets with more than one damaged part
• Handling corrected for archives created by several less common third party tools
• Shell integration reworked for the current Windows context menu
• Interface scaling fixed on high density and mixed density multi monitor setups

Installation

Read the whole list before you start. Most of the reports that come into the desk about this title turn out to be a step taken out of order.

1. Extract the archive using whatever is already on the machine. Windows can open it if nothing else is installed.
2. Run the installer and choose which formats you want it to associate with.
3. Enable the context menu integration on the same screen.
4. Close the installer when it finishes.
5. Copy the included licence file into the installation directory.
6. Open WinRAR and confirm the reminder no longer appears on launch.

System requirements

Processor	Any x86 or x64 processor
Memory	512 MB, more helps with large dictionary sizes
Graphics	Not applicable
Storage	20 MB free plus space for your archives
Display	Any

Notes from the desk

Full details

Title	WinRAR
Developer	win.rar GmbH
Version	7.23
Category	Utilities & Tools
Release type	Full version
Operating system	Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 7
Architecture	x86 / x64
Interface language	Multilingual
Archive size	4.1 MB
File name	winrar_7.23_multilang.rar
Shelf updated	1 day ago
Total downloads	567,898

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