New Update Windows 11 finally gets native RAR support

[HarborFront]

The Microsoft Build developer’s conference has been heavily focused on all things AI, per usual, but the company’s making announcements in other spaces, including a particularly useful update for Windows 11 users. The operating system is finally getting native RAR support, ending the tyranny of third-party apps like WinRAR.

This is an open-source solution powered by the multi-format libarchive project. Microsoft says this not only offers a native option to handle RAR files, but additional formats like tar, 7-zip, gz and many others, as reported by The Verge. It also touts “improved functionality” regarding compression when compared to third-party apps.

The company hasn’t announced an official launch date for the feature, but Windows 11 is getting a robust update tomorrow with support for Bluetooth LE and more, so maybe it’ll get tacked onto that. We’ll let you know. It’s always nice to have options when it comes to compressing and unzipping files. Here’s hoping this new tool is easy to use and, most importantly, fast.

Windows 11 finally gets native RAR support

Windows 11 is finally getting native rar support, ending the tyranny of third-party apps like WinRAR. It’s part of the open-source libarchive project and can handle multiple file formats beyond RAR, like 7-zip, tar and gz, among others. Microsoft also says the technology allows for more...

www.engadget.com

 

[brambedkar59]

We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project. You now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows.

Bringing the power of AI to Windows 11 – unlocking a new era of productivity for customers and developers with Windows Copilot and Dev Home

The team and I are pumped to be back at Build with the developer community this year. Over the last year, Windows has continued to see incredible growth fueled by Windows 11 adoption. In fact, one of the mo

blogs.windows.com

 

[silversurfer]

Now that Windows 11 will soon have the ability to open RAR archives on its own, we wondered how win.rar GmbH, the Germany-based company that owns and updates the WinRAR program, felt about this new development. We asked the company for a statement and received one via email from Louise Cusworth of the WinRAR sales team:

It's taken Microsoft 30 years to implement support for RAR files into the Windows OS, and we were taken by surprise by the announcement, but now we're wondering if they're considering providing the RAR engine in 30 years, too?

Microsoft announced many other features for the next Windows 11 release, but obviously the part about the support for different archives and for .rar, in particular, created a big splash on the internet.

First of all, we feel honoured with Microsoft's decision. This will hopefully make RAR compression even more popular and more accessible to those users who are not familiar with WinRAR.

Are we concerned? Of course we are, because we are a small company and Microsoft is a big international multi-billion dollar company with a lot of power. However, others might be even more concerned about Microsoft's decision.
When searching on Google for "how to open rar files", we see the advertisements of our competitors; this could become obsolete in the future, but we simply don't know.

Although users will still need WinRAR to create RAR files, they'll no longer need it to open their .rar files (which was never exclusive to WinRAR anyway), but, hopefully, there are enough people out there who will continue to support a small software company like us, so that we can continue to develop WinRAR for a long time to come!

Your article and the many others that are now popping up online, introduce both challenges and benefits for our business. We need to keep developing WinRAR to make it even more attractive to users, and we have just released the Beta version for WinRAR 6.22 and are currently working on a major upgrade, which will hopefully be ready by the end of the year.

WinRAR on Windows 11 getting RAR support: "We feel honoured with Microsoft's decision"

WinRAR says that Microsoft's decision to add support for opening RAR files in Windows 11 will "introduce both challenges and benefits for our business." It also plans to release a major WinRAR upgrade

www.neowin.net