Microsoft has just announced that Windows 11 will bring support for RAR, 7-Zip, and other compression formats that Windows users have been waiting for decades.
According to The Verge , besides adding the new Windows Copilot feature powered by artificial intelligence (AI), Microsoft has announced that Windows 11 users can now open RAR, 7-Zip, or multiple formats. other open source. This is achieved thanks to the open source project Libarchive, which improves the performance of the decompression function on Windows, even better than with third-party applications
Microsoft supported ZIP files in Windows for the first time in 1998, but to work with 7-Zip (.7z), RAR (.rar) or GZ (.gz) files, users need to install it. third party applications. For example, 7-Zip is a free and open source application, while the WinRAR application offers a 40-day trial. The GZ format is more commonly used in Linux through the GNU Zip (gzip) utilities along with the TAR format.
In its statement, Microsoft said support for these formats is currently being discussed, and that the company will roll them out to Windows 11 users who will receive them through an update that is being finalized later this week. . Even so, it is not clear whether the functions will be supported when working with compressed files. Additional features include password protection both during file compression and decompression.
Microsoft director of Windows and devices Panos Panay said that integrating with Windows 11 productivity tools will allow users to get things done quickly and in the best way
