7-Zip

What is 7-Zip?

7-Zip is a powerful file archiver with a high compression ratio. This free software is open-source, making it an excellent choice for both personal and commercial use without the need for registration or payment. As a leading compression software, 7-Zip supports a wide range of formats and offers many advanced features.

Guide: Using 7-Zip for File Compression and Extraction

Key Features of 7-Zip

• High Compression Ratio: Achieves high compression using LZMA and LZMA2 algorithms.
• Supported Formats:
  • Packing / Unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP, WIM
  • Unpacking Only: APFS, AR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, HFS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VHDX, VMDK, XAR, Z
• Better Compression Ratios: 7-Zip provides 2-10% better compression than PKZip and WinZip for ZIP and GZIP formats.
• Strong AES-256 Encryption: Available in 7z and ZIP formats.
• Self-Extracting Capability: Create self-extracting archives in 7z format.
• Windows Shell Integration: Seamlessly integrates with the Windows Shell.
• Powerful File Manager: Manage your files efficiently with the built-in file manager.
• Command Line Version: Utilize 7-Zip's powerful command-line interface for scripting and automation.
• FAR Manager Plugin: Extend functionality with the FAR Manager plugin.
• Localization: Available in 87 languages.

These 7-Zip features make it one of the most versatile and efficient file archivers available.

System Requirements

7-Zip is compatible with a wide range of Windows versions:

• Windows 11
• Windows 10
• Windows 8
• Windows 7
• Windows Vista
• Windows XP
• Windows 2022
• Windows 2019
• Windows 2016
• Windows 2012
• Windows 2008
• Windows 2003
• Windows 2000

This extensive compatibility ensures that users on almost any Windows software platform can benefit from 7-Zip's capabilities.

Licensing

7-Zip is free software, distributed under the GNU LGPL license. Some parts of the code are covered by the BSD 3-clause license, and there are unRAR license restrictions for certain parts of the code. For detailed information, read the 7-Zip License information.

Community and Support

For additional support, visit 7-Zip's SourceForge Page. Here you can find forums, bug reports, and feature request systems to help you get the most out of 7-Zip.

About the 7z Format

The 7z format is the new archive format, providing a high compression ratio and many advanced features. The main features of the 7z format include:

• Open architecture: Allows for integration of new compression methods.
• High compression ratio: Uses advanced algorithms for better compression.
• Strong AES-256 encryption: Provides secure encryption for your files.
• Ability to use any compression, conversion, or encryption method: Highly flexible format.
• Supports files up to 16000000000 GB: Can handle extremely large files.
• Unicode file names: Supports international characters in file names.
• Solid compression: Combines multiple files into a single block for better compression.
• Archive headers compression: Compresses archive headers to save space.

7z has an open architecture, so it can support any new compression methods. Currently, the following compression methods are integrated into 7z: LZMA, LZMA2, PPMD, BZip2, Copy

7z also supports filters that improve the compression ratio of the main compression method. Currently, the following filters are integrated into 7z:

• BCJ: Converter for x86 executables
• BCJ2: Converter for x86 executables
• ARM64: Converter for ARM64 executables
• ARMT: Converter for 32-bit ARM-Thumb executables
• ARM: Converter for 32-bit ARM32 executables
• PPC: Converter for PowerPC executables
• SPARC: Converter for SPARC executables
• IA64: Converter for IA-64 (Itanium) executables
• Delta: Converter for WAV files
• Swap2/Swap4: Converters for changing the order of bytes

LZMA is the default and general compression method of the 7z format. The main features of the LZMA method include:

• High compression ratio
• Variable dictionary size (up to 4 GB)
• Compressing speed: about 2-8 MB/s on a 4 GHz CPU (2 CPU threads version)
• Decompressing speed: about 30-100 MB/s on a 4 GHz CPU (1 CPU thread)
• Small memory requirements for decompressing (depends on dictionary size)
• Small code size for decompressing: about 5 KB

7-Zip also supports encryption with the AES-256 algorithm. This algorithm uses a cipher key with a length of 256 bits. To create that key, 7-Zip uses a derivation function based on the SHA-256 hash algorithm. A key derivation function produces a derived key from a text password defined by the user. To increase the cost of exhaustive search for passwords, 7-Zip uses a large number of iterations to produce the cipher key from the text password.

Changelog

24.06          2024-05-26
-------------------------
- The bug was fixed: 7-Zip could not unpack some ZSTD archives.


24.05          2024-05-14
-------------------------
- New switch -myv={MMNN} to set decoder compatibility version for 7z archive creating.
  {MMNN} is 4-digit number that represents the version of 7-Zip without a dot.
  If -myv={MMNN} switch is specified, 7-Zip will only use compression methods that can 
  be decoded by the specified version {MMNN} of 7-Zip and newer versions.
  If -myv={MMNN} switch is not specified, -myv=2300 is used, and 7-Zip will only
  use compression methods that can be decoded by 7-Zip 23.00 and newer versions.
- New switch -myfa={FilterID} to    allow 7-Zip to use the specified filter method for 7z archive creating.
- New switch -myfd={FilterID} to disallow 7-Zip to use the specified filter method for 7z archive creating.
- Some bugs were fixed.


24.04          2024-04-05
-------------------------
- New menu item in 7-Zip File Manager: "Tools / Delete Temporary Files...".
  This menu item opens a window showing temporary folders and files
  created by 7-Zip in the user's "Temp" folder on a Windows system. 
  In this window, the user can delete temporary files.


24.03          2024-03-23
-------------------------
- 7-Zip now can use new RISCV filter for compression to 7z and xz archives.
  RISCV filter can increase compression ratio for data containing executable
  files compiled for RISC-V architecture.
- The speed for LZMA and LZMA2 decompression in ARM64 version for Windows
  was increased by 20%-60%.
- 7-Zip GUI and 7-Zip File Manager can ask user permission to unpack RAR archives that
  require big amount of memory, if the dictionary size in RAR archive is larger than 4 GB.
- new switch -smemx{size}g : to set allowed memory usage limit for RAR archive unpacking.
  RAR archives can use dictionary up 64 GB. Default allowed limit for RAR unpacking is 4 GB.
- 7zg.exe (7-Zip GUI): -y switch disables user requests and messages.
- 7-Zip shows hash methods XXH64 and BLAKE2sp in context menu.
- -slmu switch : to show timestamps as UTC instead of LOCAL TIME.
- -slsl switch : in console 7-Zip for Windows : to show file paths with 
  linux path separator slash '/' instead of backslash separator '\'.
- 7-Zip supports .sha256 files that use backslash path separator '\'.
- Some bugs were fixed.


24.01          2024-01-31
-------------------------
- 7-Zip now can unpack ZSTD archives (.zst filename extension).
- 7-Zip now can unpack ZIP, SquashFS and RPM archives that use ZSTD compression method.
- 7-Zip now supports fast hash algorithm XXH64 that is used in ZSTD.
- 7-Zip now can unpack RAR archives (that use larger than 4 GB dictionary) created by new WinRAR 7.00.
- 7-Zip now can unpack DMG archives that use XZ (ULMO/LZMA) compression method.
- 7-Zip now can unpack NTFS images with cluster size larger than 64 KB.
- 7-Zip now can unpack MBR and GPT images with 4 KB sectors.
- Speed optimizations for archive unpacking: rar, cab, wim, zip, gz.
- Speed optimizations for hash caclulation: CRC-32, CRC-64, BLAKE2sp.
- The bug was fixed: 7-Zip for Linux could fail for multivolume creation in some cases.
- Some bugs were fixed.