| 7-Zip | |
|---|---|
 | |
 7-Zip File Manager onWindows 11 | |
| Developer | Igor Pavlov[1] |
| Initial release | 2 January 1999; 26 years ago (1999-01-02)[2] |
| Stable release | 25.01[3]  (3 August 2025; 3 months ago (3 August 2025)) |
| Preview release | 24.09 (29 November 2024; 11 months ago (2024-11-29)) [±][4] |
| Repository | |
| Written in | Assembly,C andC++[5] |
| Operating system | Windows/ReactOS,[6]BSD,macOS,Linux,[7] |
| Size | 1.1–1.7MB[8] |
| Available in | 89 languages[9] |
List of languages Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Aragonese, Armenian, Asturian, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Bashkir, Basque, Belarusian, Breton, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Extremaduran, Farsi, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, Georgian, German, Greek, Gujarati, Indian, Hebrew, Hindi, Indian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Kabyle, Karakalpak - Latin, Kazakh, Korean, Kurdish - Sorani, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Latvian, Ligurian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Marathi, Mongolian (MenkCode), Mongolian (Unicode), Mongolian, Nepali, Norwegian Bokmal, Norwegian Nynorsk, Pashto, Polish, Portuguese Brazilian, Portuguese Portugal, Punjabi, Indian, Romanian, Russian, Sanskrit, Indian, Serbian - Cyrillic, Serbian - Latin, Sinhala, Vietnam, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Tatar, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uyghur, Uzbek, Valencian, Vietnamese, Welsh, Yoruba These translations are partial and for the user interface only. Help and documentations are in English. | |
| Type | File archiver |
| License | LGPL-2.1-or-later with unRAR restriction[10] / LZMA SDK in thepublic domain[11] |
| Website | 7-zip |
7-Zip is afree and open-sourcefile archiver, a utility used to place groups of files within compressed containers known as "archives". It is developed by Igor Pavlov and was first released in 1999.[2] 7-Zip has its ownarchive format called7z introduced in 2001,[12] but can read and write several others.
The program can be used from a Windowsgraphical user interface that also features shell integration, or from acommand-line interface as the command7z that offerscross-platform support (seeversions for details). An obsolete port of 7-Zip toPOSIX systems was calledp7zip.[13] Most of the 7-Zipsource code is under theLGPL-2.1-or-later license; theunRAR code, however, is under theLGPL-2.1-or-later license with an "unRAR restriction", which states that developers are not permitted to use the code toreverse-engineer theRAR compression algorithm.[14][15]
Since version 21.01 alpha, Linux support has been added to the 7zip project.[7]
By default, 7-Zip creates 7z-format archives with a.7zfile extension. Each archive can contain multiple directories and files. As acontainer format, security or size reduction are achieved by looking for similarities throughout the data using a stacked combination of filters. These can consist of pre-processors,compression algorithms, andencryption filters.
The core 7z compression uses a variety ofalgorithms, the most common of which arebzip2,PPMd,LZMA2, andLZMA. Developed by Pavlov, LZMA is a relatively new system, making its debut as part of the 7z format. LZMA uses an LZ-based sliding dictionary of up to 3840 MB in size, backed by arange coder.[16]
The native 7zfile format is open andmodular.File names are stored asUnicode.[17]
In 2011,TopTenReviews found that the 7z compression was at least 17% better thanZIP,[18] and 7-Zip's own site has since 2002 reported that while compression ratio results are very dependent upon the data used for the tests, "Usually, 7-Zip compresses to 7z format 30–70% better than to zip format, and 7-Zip compresses to zip format 2–10% better than most other zip-compatible programs."[19]
The 7z file format specification is distributed with the program's source code, in the "doc" sub-directory.
7-Zip supports a number of other compression and non-compression archive formats (both for packing and unpacking), includingZIP,gzip,bzip2,xz,tar, andWIM. The utility also supports unpackingAPM,ar,ARJ,chm,cpio,deb,FLV,JAR,LHA/LZH,LZMA, MSLZ,Office Open XML,onepkg,RAR,RPM,smzip,SWF,XAR, andZ archives andcramfs,DMG,FAT,HFS,ISO,MBR,NTFS,SquashFS,UDF, andVHDdisk images. 7-Zip supports the ZIPX format for unpacking only. It has had this support since at least version 9.20, which was released in late 2010. 7-Zip added support for RAR5 in 2015.[20]
7-Zip can open someMSI files, allowing access to the meta-files within along with the main contents. Some Microsoft CAB (LZX compression) andNSIS (LZMA) installer formats can be opened. Similarly, some Microsoft executable programs (.EXEs) that are self-extracting archives or otherwise contain archived content (e.g., some setup files) may be opened as archives.
When compressing ZIP or gzip files, 7-Zip uses its ownDEFLATE encoder, which may achieve higher compression, but at lower speed, than the more commonzlib DEFLATE implementation. The 7-Zip deflate encoder implementation is available separately as part of the AdvanceCOMP suite of tools.
The decompression engine forRAR archives was developed using freely available source code of the unRAR program, which has a licensing restriction against creation of a RAR compressor. 7-Zip v15.06 and later support extraction of files in the RAR5 format.[21] Somebackup systems use formats supported by archiving programs such as 7-Zip; e.g., someAndroid backups are intar format, and can be extracted by archivers such as 7-Zip.[22]
Some forks add more formats.
7-Zip comes with a file manager along with the standard archiver tools. The file manager has a toolbar with options to create an archive, extract an archive, test an archive to detect errors, copy, move, and delete files, and open a file properties menu exclusive to 7-Zip. The file manager, by default, displays hidden files because it does not followWindows Explorer's policies. The tabs show name, modification time, original and compressed sizes, attributes, and comments (4DOSdescript.ion format).
When going up one directory on the root, all drives, removable or internal appear. Going up again shows a list with four options:
%UserProfile%\My Documents7-Zip supports:
tc) and last access dates (ta) in archives (in addition to modification dates).[27]Threecommand-line versions are provided: 7z (7z.exe), using external libraries to support a large number of different formats and the ability to support even more formats viaplug-ins; 7za (7za.exe), which is a standalone executable containing built-in modules, but with compression/decompression support limited to7z,ZIP,gzip,bzip2,Z andtar formats; and 7zr (7zr.exe), which is aminimized standalone executable with compression/decompression support limited to just the7z format. A 64-bit version is available, with support for large memory maps, leading to faster compression. All versions support multi-threading.
p7zip is now merely a wrapper that calls the standard7za or7zr program.[28]7-zip comes with a plug-in system for expansion. The official "Links" page points to many plugins written by TC4Shell, providing extra file support.[32]
7-Zip has aLZMASDK which was originallydual-licensed under both theGNU LGPL andCommon Public License,[33] with an additional special exception for linked binaries. On 2 December 2008, the SDK wasplaced by Igor Pavlov in thepublic domain.[11]
On older versions, self-extracting archives were vulnerable toarbitrary code execution throughDLL hijacking: they load and run a DLL named UXTheme.dll, if it is in the same folder as the executable file.[34][35][36] 7-Zip 16.03 Release notes say that the installer and SFX modules have added protection against DLL preloading attack.[2]
Versions of 7-Zip prior to 18.05 contain anarbitrary code execution vulnerability in the module for extracting files fromRAR archives (CVE-2018-10115), a vulnerability that was fixed on 30 April 2018.[37]
Versions prior to 23.0 also contained anarbitrary code execution vulnerability, fixed on 7 May 2023.[38] A year later, a severeremote code execution vulnerability was found on versions prior to 24.07 (CVE-2024-11477), it was fixed on 20 November 2024.[39]
Snapfiles.com in 2012 rated 7-Zip 4.5 stars out of 5, noting, "[its] interface and additional features are fairly basic, but the compression ratio is outstanding".[40]
OnTechRepublic in 2009, Justin James found the detailed settings forWindows File Manager integration were "appreciated" and called the compression-decompression benchmark utility "neat". And though the archive dialog has settings that "will confound most users", he concluded: "7-Zip fits a nice niche in between the built-in Windows capabilities and the features of the paid products, and it is able to handle a large variety of file formats in the process."[41]
Between 2002 and 2024, 7-Zip was downloaded 428 million times fromSourceForge alone.[42]
The software has received awards, In 2007, SourceForge granted it community choice awards for "Technical Design" and for "Best Project".[43] In 2013,Tom's Hardware conducted a compression speed test comparing 7-ZIP, MagicRAR,WinRAR, WinZip; they concluded that 7-ZIP beat out all the others with regards to compression speed, ratio, and size and awarded the software the 2013 Tom's Hardware Elite award.[44]
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