WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data, reduce the size of email attachments, open and unpack RAR, ZIP as well as create new archives in these and other popular file formats. By consistently creating smaller archives, WinRAR is often faster than the competition.

Is WinRAR free?

WinRAR is available as a trial version with access to all features. After 40 days you will get a pop-up urging you to buy the license, however you can continue using the software without losing any functionality. A single WinRAR license costs $29, which will remove any pop-up messages.

Is WinRAR compatible with Windows 11?

WinRAR is fully compatible with Windows 11. It also features GUI elements consistent with the OS like rounded corners and snap layouts.

Is WinRAR available for macOS?

WinRAR developers do offer a macOS version they call RAR for macOS, however it's only a command-line only application. macOS supports native zip compression, for RAR compression support and a fully featured GUI we recommend The Unarchiver or Keka.

Features

  • WinRAR supports all popular compression formats (RAR, ZIP, CAB, ARJ, LZH, ACE, TAR, GZip, UUE, ISO, BZIP2, Z and 7-Zip).
  • WinRAR is ideal for multimedia files. WinRAR automatically recognizes and selects the best compression method. The special compression algorithm compresses multimedia files, executables and object libraries particularly well.
  • WinRAR allows you to split archives into separate volumes easily, making it possible to save them on several disks for example.
  • WinRAR is also ideal, if you are sending data through the web. Its 128 bit password encryption and its authenticated signature technology will give you the peace of mind you have been looking for.
  • WinRAR is shareware, meaning you have the chance to thoroughly test it. The program can be used absolutely free of charge for 40 days.

Download notes: Alternatively you can download the latest beta version of this software.

What's New

  • Both file and folder modification timestamps are restored when unpacking TAR and TAR based archives like tar.gz and tar.bz2. Previously only file modification timestamps were set for these archive formats.
  • Added decompression of .tar.zst archives with dictionary exceeding 128 MB. WinRAR 6.20 allowed such dictionary for .zst, but not for .tar.zst.
  • Switches -ed and -e+d are also supported by ZIP archives. Previously they worked only for RAR archives.

Bugs fixed:

  • if unencrypted file was stored after encrypted in the same RAR archive and both files had been unpacked in the same extraction command, WinRAR 6.20 failed to unpack the unencrypted file;
  • in some cases a wrong detailed reason of file open error could be displayed in the second line of open error message.

Previouse release notes

  • If "Autodetect passwords" option in "Organizer passwords" dialog is enabled and password matching a processing archive is present among saved passwords, it is applied automatically. This option is applicable only for archives in RAR 5.0 and ZIP formats, which allow to verify the password validity quickly. There is a minor chance of incorrect password detection for ZIP archives if stored passwords do not include a proper one. If encrypted ZIP archive extraction fails, you can try to disable this option, repeat extraction and enter a valid password manually.
  • If extraction command involves only a part of files in RAR archive, the additional archive analysis is performed when starting extraction. It helps to properly unpack file references even if reference source is not selected. It works for most of RAR archives except for volumes on multiple removable media and archives containing a very large number of references. Also in some cases such analysis may help to optimize the amount of processing data when extracting individual files from semi-solid archives created with -s and -se switches.
  • "Save original archive name and time" option on "Options" page of archiving dialog allows to save the original archive name and creation time. If archive includes such saved name and time, they are displayed on "Info" page of "Show information" command and can be restored on "Options" page of same command. Restoring involves renaming an archive to original name and setting the saved time as the archive creation and modification time. Switch -ams or just -am together with archive modification commands can be used to save the archive name and time in the command line mode. These saved parameters are displayed in header of "l" and "v" commands output and can be restored with -amr switch combined with "ch" command, such as "rar ch -amr arc.rar". If -amr is specified, "ch" ignores other archive modification switches.
  • Faster RAR5 compression of poorly compressible data on modern CPUs with 8 or more execution threads. This applies to all methods except "Fastest", which performance remains the same.
  • "Repair" command efficiency is improved for shuffled data blocks in recovery record protected RAR5 archives
  • If file size has grown after archiving when creating non-solid RAR volumes, such file is stored without compression regardless of olume number, provided that file isn't split between volumes. Previously it worked only for files in the first volume.
  • Added decompression of .zipx archives containing file references, provided that both reference source and target are selected and reference source precedes the target inside of archive. Typically, if .zipx archive includes file references, it is necessary to unpack the entire archive to extract references successfully.
  • Added decompression of .zst long range mode archives with dictionary exceeding 128 MB. Previously it was possible to decompress them only if dictionary was 128 MB or less.
  • If "Turn PC off", "Hibernate", "Sleep" or "Restart PC" archiving options are enabled in WinRAR, a prompt to confirm or cancel uch power management action is displayed directly before starting it. If no selection was made by user for 30 seconds, the proposed action is confirmed and started automatically. This prompt is also displayed for -ioff switch in WinRAR command line, but not in console RAR command line.
  • Context menu in WinRAR file list provides "Open in internal viewer" command for archive files. It can be helpful if you wish to view the archive raw data in internal viewer. For example, to read an email archive with UUE attachments included. Usual "View" command always displays the archive contents. If file is recognized as UUE archive, "View" would show UUE attachments.
  • Recovery record size is displayed on "Archive" page of file properties invoked from Explorer context menu for archives in RAR5 format. Previously there was only "Present" instead of exact size for RAR5 archives.
  • When archiving from stdin with -si switch, RAR displays the current amount of read bytes as the progress indicator.
  • If wrong password is specified when adding files to encrypted solid RAR5 archive, a password will be requested again. Previous versions cancelled archiving in this case.
  • If both options "Test archived files" and "Clear attribute "Archive" after compressing" or their command line -t -ac equivalents are enabled when archiving, "Archive" attribute will be cleared only if test was completed successfully. Previously it was cleared even when test reported errors.
  • NoDrives value containing the bit mask to hide drives can be now read from "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\WinRAR\Policy" Registry key, which allows to include it to winrar.ini if necessary. Its "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies" locations in HKEY_CURRENT_USER and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE are also supported. Previously only "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies" in HKEY_CURRENT_USER was recognized.

Bugs fixed

  • archive modification commands could fail for some ZIP archives with file comments
  • fixed a memory leak when reading contents of .tar.bz2 archives
  • if source and resulting archive format is the same, the archive conversion command didn't set the original archive time to a newly created archive even if "Original archive time" option was selected in archiving parameters
  • if "Merge volumes contents" option in "Settings/File list" was turned on, the folder packed size in WinRAR file list could be less than expected when browsing a multivolume archive contents. It didn't include the packed size of file parts continuing from previous volume into calculation
  • even if "Set file security" extraction option was turned off by default, extraction commands in Explorer context menu still attempted to restore NTFS file security data
  • WinRAR could read data beyond the end of buffer and crash when unpacking files from specially crafted ZIP archive. We are thankful to Bakker working with Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative for letting us know about this bug