Shannon Stapleton / reuters
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft’s Build Developers Conference this year is still dominated by AI, but there are still some slightly unexpected announcements outside of AI. One of these is that Windows 11 will finally get native RAR compression file support, so that users don’t have to feel embarrassed about not paying for WinRAR (huh).
The built-in compression/decompression tool in Windows 11 will be based on the open source libarchive. In addition to RAR, it also supports 7-zip, Gzip and other formats. Microsoft also claims that it has “enhanced functions” compared to third-party apps, but for ordinary users, seamless integration with file explorers (like zip files now) is probably the biggest advantage of native support.
Unfortunately, Microsoft did not say when this feature will be launched, so your “trial version” of WinRAR may take a while longer.