Windows PCs Will Finally Get Native Support For RAR Files: What It Means

If you download a lot of .Zip files and use WinRar to extract the content, Windows 11 is going to make your lives easier. Microsoft has confirmed that RAR files will have native support on WIndows 11 PCs. WinRar has been the go-to software for Windows users who want to download big file sizes shared via email or other platforms.

Bringing native support for .RAR would be a big convenience for Windows PC users, who don’t need additional steps to download the content in the near future. In fact, most of the WinRAR users pay for using the software, which won’t be needed once the native support is available. Microsoft says the .RAR file support will be rolling out with a new build later this year.

In addition to the .rar files, Windows 11 also gets native support for gz, 7-zip and other file formats. We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project,” said Panos Panay, Chief Product Offier, Windows via a blog post this week.

Microsoft is using the open-source project, which allows the company to work with different file compression formats and make them compatible with Windows 11.

It will be interesting to see how WinRaR decides to act on this announcement, especially since it has many people paying money to use the file compression software. And what happens to those who have already paid for WinRaR now that it is freely available to anyone with a Windows 11 PC.

I guess people still using a Windows 10 PC will need a paid version of WinRaR to compress the files, which still leaves the company with millions of Windows users out there to help build their business. WinRaR came out back in 1995 so it is high time that Windows PCs are compatible with the format along with other file compression versions out there in the market.