WinRAR

Overview

WinRAR is one of those tools that ends up on every Windows machine eventually, because sooner or later a file arrives in a format that Windows itself cannot open. It extracts RAR, ZIP, 7Z, TAR, GZ, BZ2, XZ, ISO, CAB, ARJ, LZH, UUE, Z and a long list of others, and it writes RAR and ZIP with a level of control the built in handler does not attempt.

The compression side is where it earns its reputation. The RAR format supports solid archives that treat a whole set of files as one continuous stream for much better ratios on many similar files, dictionary sizes up to a gigabyte for large sets, and a dedicated compression mode that recognises common file types and handles them appropriately. On a folder of documents, source code or raw data the difference against a plain ZIP is substantial.

Recovery records are the feature people appreciate only once. A percentage of the archive can be reserved for repair data, so an archive damaged in transfer or by a failing disk can be reconstructed rather than lost. Recovery volumes extend that across a split set, and the repair command handles the ordinary case of a truncated or partially corrupted file without any preparation at all.

Daily use is built around the shell integration and the command line. Right click menus for compressing and extracting, drag and drop into an open archive, archive previewing without extraction, self extracting archives for sending to someone with nothing installed, split volumes for size limited transfers, AES encryption with optional filename hiding, and a full command line interface for scripted backup jobs.

Key Features

• Extraction support for RAR, ZIP, 7Z, TAR, GZ, BZ2, XZ, ISO, CAB, ARJ and many more
• RAR and ZIP creation with solid archiving and dictionary sizes up to a gigabyte
• Recovery records and recovery volumes for repairing damaged archives
• Repair command for truncated and partially corrupted files
• Split volumes for transferring large sets across size limited media
• Self extracting archives for recipients with no archiver installed
• AES encryption with optional filename encryption
• Shell integration with right click compress, extract here and extract to folder
• Archive preview and in place editing without full extraction
• Full command line interface for scripted and scheduled backup jobs

What Changed in This Build

• Improved compression ratio on mixed content archives
• Faster extraction of large solid archives
• Additional format support added to the extraction list
• Shell integration reworked for the current Windows context menu

System Requirements

Processor	Any x86 or x64 processor
Memory	512 MB, more for very large dictionary sizes
Storage	20 MB plus space for archives
Operating system	Windows 7 or newer
Permissions	Administrator rights for shell integration during install

Release Details

Full title	WinRAR
Version string	7.23
Publisher	win.rar GmbH
Category	Utilities
Licence	Full version, no term limit
Platform	Windows 7 through 11, 32 and 64-bit
Interface language	Multilingual, 40 plus interface languages
Archive size	4.1 MB
Mirrors	4 active, all reporting online
Listed	refreshed 8 weeks ago, checked again 40 minutes ago

Installation Notes

• Turn on a recovery record of three to five percent for anything you are storing long term or transferring over an unreliable connection.
• Solid archives compress much better but require extracting from the beginning to reach a file in the middle, so avoid them for sets you will dip into repeatedly.
• Set your preferred formats in the integration settings so the context menu is not cluttered with every entry it can offer.

Before You Start

Read the notes above before running setup. Most of the problems people write in about are covered there, and almost all of them come down to an older version of the same software still being installed, a graphics driver that predates the release, or a security suite quarantining part of the package mid install.

There is no archive password on this or any other entry in the library. If something you downloaded elsewhere claims to come from here and asks for one, it did not come from here. Nothing on this site is behind a survey, a shortener or a countdown either.

If the entry does not match what the page describes, say so on the contact page and include the version string from the release details table. Reports naming a specific version get checked first because the checker can reproduce them straight away.

Frequently Asked