Microsoft has added support for extracting archive formats and creating ZIP archives in its Windows operating system. This is a useful feature, as it allows users to manage several popular archive formats without installation of third-party software.
If you encounter archives occasionally, say once a month, then it is usually easier to use the built-in functionality than third-party tools.
Now, Microsoft is working on bringing support to create 7-Zip and Tar archives to Windows 11. This works identical to creating zip archives.
Just right-click on and select the “compress to” option to see a list of all available archive formats. Pick the one you want and Windows will compress the selection of files to the format.
The three supported formats increase the usefulness of the feature. While Windows continues to lack support for creating other popular formats, such as Rar or Gz, adding native support for more formats is still welcome.
Third-party archive software is superior
While it is great that Windows is getting support for extracting and creating archives, most users may want to use third-party software still.
The main reason is performance. Extracting archives with Windows’ built-in extraction feature is much slower. Similarly, creating archives using Windows’ built-in compress to functionality is also much slower.
This is true for any of the supported formats. It can takes minutes longer to extract an archive using the Windows functionality. Might not be such a big problem if the functionality is needed rarely, but if you happen to extract or compress regularly, you should use third-party software such as 7-Zip or WinRAR to do so.
Closing Words
All in all, it is still a good feature addition to Windows. It improves handling of archives right out of the box. Still, most users should install third-party archive software to manage archives on Windows.
What about you? Do you use archive software? If so which and why this particular piece?
I use 7-zip, with custom blue icons from here: https://github.com/Mr4Mike4/7-Zip-Filetype-Theme
The real question is “Is Microsoft providing any form of support for these open-source projects?”
I use PeaZip which is plenty for my needs, but 7 Zip came out with the latest version, 24.05, which makes it the open source choice for power archivers:
https://linuxiac.com/7-zip-24-05-file-archiver/
Some unbelievable decompression speeds with 7 Zip.
I understand and it’s great that MS would introduce newer features; yet, if the newer is slower as in lengthy minutes, maybe they should stay out of the field–ease of use will appeal to many, I guess.
May a prehistoric user of a prehistoric OS have his word? 🙂
Running Windows 7 and archive formats are here handled quasi systematically with the ‘Total Commander’ software built-in archive manager.
Cannot remember last time I called upon the ‘Honeyview’ app (ver. 5.51, no longer updated, upgrades not of my concern) to handle an archive format.
I seldom zip/unzip, maybe downloaded zipped software is the most common use of unzipping, together with sending a file or two within an email, but that’s about it.