How To Open a RAR File On Windows 10/11? Tutorial

Concerned about how to open a RAR file on Windows 10/11? But before you try to open a RAR file, you must have a little knowledge about what is RAR file? According to Wikipedia, “RAR is a proprietary archive file format that supports data compression, error recovery and file spanning”. But unfortunately, Windows to date doesn’t support opening a RAR file by default, unlike Zip files. That means to open and uncompress a RAR file, you have to take support of third-party applications or software.

Presently there are numerous unarchive tools to handle RAR files. In this article, we will discuss some of the popular tools for uncompressing or opening a RAR file. And parallel, we will also show you how to compress a file and create a RAR file. So, don’t miss or skip reading till the last of this article. And if you have any questions after reading the full content, you may ask me in the comment box below.

How to open RAR files?

To open a RAR file on your Windows 10/11 PC, at first you need to download any third-party uncompression software. Out of the several tools available online, we will talk about the most popular ones.

10 Best applications to open RAR files

1. WinRAR

When the name of a RAR file comes to mind, the first unarchiving software which I remember is WinRAR. This software is not only associated with the RAR files, it supports a lot of other archive types, such as Zip, 7z, zipx, Cab, Tar, and so on.

While installing WinRAR, you will get this window. You can also create an archive with this tool and set different parameters while creating the archive, encrypting and locking folder and archive.

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Thus to open a RAR file, you just need to right-click on the RAR file, after installation of WinRAR software into your system. You will be able to view different options to extract the RAR archive. Choose any from the list as per your requirement.

Thus to open a RAR file, you just need to right-click on the RAR file, after installation of WinRAR software into your system. You will be able to view different options to extract the RAR archive. Choose any from the list as per your requirement.

You can download WinRAR for its official site. It is available for all popular OS platforms such as Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD, Android.

2. WinZip

WinZip also supports unarchive of the RAR files. Like WinRAR, WinZip also supports several other files archive file types such as Zip, Zipx, 7z, Gz, Tar, and so on.

Opening a RAR file with WinZip is somewhat similar to that of the WinRAR. After installation of WinZIP into your system, right-click on the RAR file and you will get the options for unarchiving, as shown in the screenshot below.

However, you can’t create the RAR archive, with WinZip. WinZip is present in the Microsoft store as well you can download it from its official site. WinZip is also built for macOS, Android, and iOS.

3. 7-Zip

7-Zip is small yet powerful. The procedure to unarchive the RAR files is similar to that of the other ones. Just right-click on the RAR file present on your drive, you will get option 7-Zip>Extract Here or Extract files…

You can also create an archive with 7-Zip, but RAR is not a supported format for creating an archive. You can create 7z, tar, wim, and zip archives only.

You can download 7-Zip from the 7-Zip official site.

4. PeaZip

PeaZip is a good alternative to WinRAR and WinZIP. This application is completely free and can handle 7z, TAR, Zip, and RAR archives.

To unarchive or open a RAR file, just right-click on the RAR file and you will get the PeaZip option. Under the PeaZip menu, you will find all the extraction options.

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If you want to create an archive with PeaZip, open the PeaZip application and browse the file or folder you want to archive. Or you may directly right-click on the folder you want to archive and under the PeaZip option, select the “Add to archive” option. Don’t forget that you can’t create a RAR archive with PeaZip. However, you can create 7z, zip, TAR, and so on, with PeaZip.

PeaZip can be downloaded from PeaZip’s official site. It has support for MS Windows, ReactOS, Wine, Linux OS, and BSD.

5. Bandizip

Bandizip is freeware and is supported on both Windows and Mac OS. It supports 30+ formats for extraction, which includes RAR, RAR6, 7Z, Zip, and so on.

To extract RAR files with Bandizip, you just need to right-click on the RAR file and select the extract option.

You can also create an archive with Bandizip either directly right-clicking on the file or folder and selecting the compress to or create archive option. Or from the Bandzip interface and selecting the “New Archive” option. However, creating a RAR archive is not facilitated by Bandizip. Instead, you can create Zip, Zipx, Tar,7z, etc with Bandizip.

You can download Bandizip from the Bandisoft website, or filehippo or filehorse, or Softonic sites.

6. B1 Free Archiver

B1 Free Archiver is an award-winning tool. It is too simple yet very powerful archive tool. You can open a RAR file on the Windows 10/11 platform, in the same manner. You need to right-click on the RAR file and select the Extract option.

Creating an archive with B1Free Archiver is somewhat similar, you need to right-click on the file or folder you want to archive and select the “Create archive” option. Although you can not create the RAR archive. Zip, 7z, TAR, Gzip BZip2, and B1 Archive types are supported.

B1 Free Archiver is supported on Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android. You can download this software from the B1 official site or Softonic or Softpedia.

7. IZArc

This is another free archive tool that supports unarchive RAR files. It supports other popular archive formats such as 7z, zip, TAR, and so on.

You can open a RAR file similarly as that of the other applications do. Just right-click on the RAR archive file and select the IZArc option and under that select the extract option.

Similarly, while creating an archive with IZArc, right-click on the file or folder you want to archive and select the IZArc option, and under that select the “Add to archive file” option. However, you can’t create the RAR archive with IZArc, because it is not supported by IZArc. Instead, you can create other archive formats such as Zip, TAR, JAR, etc.

You can download this unarchive tool from IZArc official site. It is supported on Windows and iOS platforms.

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8. Ashampoo Zip Free

For this application, you need to enter your details along with your email ID for obtaining a free license key. Otherwise, you would not be able to use this application. After the installation is over you need to enter the license key obtained by entering your details. And opening a RAR file with Ashampoo Zip free tool is similar. Right-click on the RAR archive file and the extract option will be available directly. Select the appropriate one.

While creating an archive with Ashampoo Zip Free, the RAR archive option is unavailable. You can easily create Zip, 7z, Cab, Tar, and LHA formatted archive files. Just right-click on any file or folder you want to archive and select the “Compress to” option.

You can download this application from Ashampoo official website. This application is supported only on Windows OS.

9. ExtractNow

This application has certain limitations. This only works as an extractor of the archive files. This tool can’t be used to create any archive. However, you can batch process multiple archive files. To open a RAR file with ExtractNow, just drag and drop the archive file and click on the Extract button, to extract the archive file.

You can download this application from ExtractNow’s official site or Cnet or Softonic or Softpedia sites. ExtractNow is also available on Microsoft Store. This application is only supported on Windows OS. But it can run on Linux and macOS using the Windows application compatibility layer called Wine.

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10. The Unarchiver

This application is only supported on macOS and is free. It supports almost all popular archive formats such as zip, zipx, RAR, 7z, Tar, Gzip, Cab, and so on. You can similarly open the RAR archive file.

This application is available on Mac App Store.

Conclusion

To open or extract a RAR file on your Windows 10/11 or macOS, are the applications listed above will serve your purpose. However few of them have some limitations or boundaries. So you need to choose the one which suits you best. However, there are several other applications are present in the cyber world. If you have used any other application and liked it, you can mention them in the comment section below. And there are online web-based extraction tools available. You don’t even need to install any software into your system. You just upload the file into the webserver of the site and the tool to extract it and the extracted file will be available for download. However, if there is any private or secret files or large file, then it is difficult to use such web-based extraction tools. We will discuss such web-based compress and uncompress tools in some other articles.

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