Unzip Online

The list above covers the archives you are likely to meet. ZIP and ZIPX come from Windows, macOS and most email systems. RAR is common on file-sharing sites and for split downloads. 7Z is the native format of the free 7-Zip app. TAR on its own only joins files; with GZ, BZ2 or XZ added it is also compressed, which is how Linux software, source code and server backups are usually shipped. CAB is the Microsoft cabinet format used for drivers and Windows updates.

A few file types are archives under a different name. An APK is an Android app package and a JAR is a Java program, and both are ZIP files inside, so extracting them shows the resources and code files they carry. An ISO is a copy of a CD, DVD or installer disc, laid out under the ECMA-119 standard (also published as ISO 9660); opening it here gives you the files on the disc without burning or mounting it.

If what you really want is the same files in another archive type, for example a RAR you need to send on as ZIP, the archive converter repacks it in one step instead of making you extract and zip again.

Single-file compression formats work a little differently. A file ending in .gz, .bz2 or .xz without .tar in front usually holds one compressed file, such as a database dump or a log. Extracting it gives back that one file under its original name. When the name ends in .tar.gz, .tgz, .tar.xz or a similar pair, the tool unpacks both layers at once, so you get the files rather than an intermediate TAR.

Get the files as is the main choice. Individual files shows a list with a download button per item, which is the quickest way when you need one document from a large archive. One ZIP puts everything back into a single standard ZIP, which is useful when the source was a RAR, 7Z or TAR.GZ that the receiver cannot open, or when a phone browser makes saving dozens of files one by one tedious.

Folder layout keeps the original folder tree or flattens it so that every file sits at the top level. Keep it for projects where paths matter, such as a website or a code repository; flatten it for photo sets and scans that were sorted into many small folders. When flattening brings two files with the same name together, Same file names decides what happens: rename the later ones with a number, keep only the last, or keep only the first.

Extract archives inside opens archives found within the archive, a pattern common with backups and download bundles that wrap a ZIP inside a ZIP. Skip hidden system files drops the __MACOSX folders, .DS_Store files and Thumbs.db entries that Macs and Windows leave behind, which usually only clutter the result.

Archive password is used only to decrypt the archive during this batch. ZIP files can be locked with the old ZipCrypto scheme or with AES, and 7Z and RAR use AES; all of them open the same way here once the password is right. If an archive opens but a few files inside report a wrong password, the person who made it used different passwords for different files, which some archivers allow, so ask for the second one.

On a phone, the built-in file managers on Android and iPhone handle plain ZIP files but often stop at RAR, 7Z or encrypted archives. Extracting here and choosing Individual files lets you save just the photo or document you need straight to the phone, without installing an archive app for a one-off job.

Every archive stores file names as bytes, and the extractor has to guess which character set those bytes belong to. ZIP files originally assumed the IBM code page 437 of MS-DOS. The format's specification, PKWARE's APPNOTE, later added a flag that marks names as UTF-8, but many older archivers, and some current ones set to a regional default, still write names in the local code page of the computer that made the archive. A ZIP created on a Japanese or Russian Windows system can therefore show names as random accented letters elsewhere.

File name encoding is set to auto-detect, which handles most cases. When names still look wrong, choose the set the archive was likely made with: Shift_JIS for Japanese, GBK for simplified Chinese, EUC-KR for Korean, CP866 for Russian and other Cyrillic text, and CP437 for very old Western archives. Only the names change; the contents of the files are never affected by this setting. If you are not sure which set to try, look at where the archive came from: the sender's language and the age of the software that made it are usually enough of a hint, and a wrong guess costs nothing more than another try.

RAR and 7Z archives store names in Unicode, so garbled names are almost always a ZIP problem. If you make archives for people in other countries, Zip Files can pack them as 7Z, which avoids the guessing altogether.