These programs — commonly called zip or unzip programs — are usually small, easy to install, and support lots of common compression formats. In addition to decompressing files, PeaZip can also create new archives in over 10 formats. These can be password-protected and encrypted with 256-bit AES encryption, as well as secured with a keyfile for added protection. PeaZip has some advanced features, too, like scheduled archives and support for creating self-extracting files. Dozens of archive file types can be opened with 7-Zip, and you can create a new archive in a few popular formats. You can also create self-extracting files in the EXE format that can be launched and extracted without using any decompression software — this is great if you’re sending an archive to someone but you aren’t sure if they have the proper software to extract files. 7-Zip integrates with Windows Explorer so that you can right-click an archive file to pull the content out. Something else we like about 7-Zip is that it doesn’t try to install extra software or toolbars during setup. However, one downside is that there isn’t a portable 7-Zip available from the developer. Password-protection is supported if you’re creating a new archive, with either ZipCrypto or 256-bit AES encryption. Drag and drop archives into jZip or just right-click a supported format and choose to extract the contents. It’s really that easy to unzip an archive with jZip. There’s an interesting feature in CAM UnZip where the program can be configured to automatically run a “setup.exe” file if one is extracted from a ZIP archive. This can greatly speed things up if you’ll be extracting lots of setup files. During install, you’re given the option to install CAM UnZip as a portable program that can be launched from a removable drive, or, of course, as a regular one that runs from your computer. Zipeg doesn’t allow the creation of new archives, but it handles unzipping files just fine. When the program first opens, you get to choose which file extensions you want to be associated with the program so that you can be sure that Zipeg is the one that opens all of your archives. One particular feature worth noting is the option to automatically open nested archives, meaning that Zipeg will open archives stored within the archive, automatically. While this isn’t very common, it is helpful when you run into an archive like that. While there isn’t support for showing Zipeg in the right-click context menu, which makes unzipping files really easy, Zipeg does support drag and drop into its program window. You can’t download all the files at once, which is unfortunate, so you must select each file individually to download. Also, password-protected files can’t be extracted with Unzip-Online. There is a max upload size limit of 200 MB per file, which is probably just fine for most archives. There really isn’t anything to this program except the initial screen, which lets you load a RAR file and choose where it should be extracted. Just select Extract to get the files. Drag and drop is supported for opening a ZIP file in Zipper, but it can’t open a 256-bit AES encrypted file. The interface isn’t nearly as easy to use as the other programs in this list, there isn’t a Windows Explorer integration setting, and it takes longer than it should to create your own ZIP file because you must use the built-in file explorer to select data. Given the other programs in this list, Zipper really shouldn’t be your preferred choice for a file unzipper. However, it is a working option and can do the job correctly, even if it’s not the easiest to use or the most appealing program. The program is easy to use because it can be integrated with the right-click context menu in Windows. You can use this menu to quickly open or extract any of the supported unpacking formats. There’s a really helpful feature in IZArc that lets you convert between archive formats, such as RAR to ZIP and many other variations of all sorts of formats. This is also true for CD images, meaning that you could make an ISO file from a BIN, MDF, NRG, or NDI file. Archives created with IZArc can be password-protected with 256-bit AES encryption or ZipCrypto. A portable download called IZArc2Go is also available on the download page, plus a command line tool and an iOS app. Several formats are supported with ZipGenius, for both creating and extracting archives. You can password-protect new archives, automatically exclude particular file types when compressing files, and even split an archive into several smaller parts for easier web sharing or storage. When extracting an archive with ZipGenius, you can set up one of the best antivirus programs to automatically scan the results to ensure you’re not opening an infected archive. ZipGenius also supports converting an archive to the ZIP format to easily change the file type to this popular one. There’s also an option in the settings to set the priority of ZipGenius to control how many system resources can be allocated to it when compressing and decompressing files. In addition to opening and extracting ZIP files, Free Zip Wizard can create new ZIP files that are password-protected and supports uploading a newly created ZIP file to an FTP server with the built-in FTP client. When creating a new ZIP file, File Zip Wizard doesn’t allow adding whole folders to the archive, but you can select more than one file at a time, which is helpful. It’s really easy to choose how much compression you wish to apply to the ZIP file with a slider setting — you can choose anywhere from no compression to maximum compression. Something you might not like about Free Zip Wizard is that it shows an advertisement every time you close the program. Like many other programs in this list, TUGZip can make self-extracting archives, but it also lets you add custom commands that run after the extraction completes. You can add an installed free virus scanner to the TUGZip settings to have it scan extracted files automatically, which is great to prevent a malicious file from an archive from infecting your computer. TUGZip can also create batch archives, repair broken archives, and convert an archive to one of several formats like 7Z, CAB, RAR, or ZIP. AlZip supports scanning files right after they’re extracted using your own antivirus program, which is super helpful if you’re downloading lots of archives since they may contain malware. In addition, ALZip supports drag and drop to open archives, and encryption when making a new one. A really awesome feature we found in ALZip is the ability to preview the contents of an archive without opening it, called Peak in Archive. This works by simply right-clicking a supported archive (like a ZIP file) and viewing the file names in the context menu. Loading files into a new ZIP file with BiGZIP isn’t as intuitive as some of the other programs in this list, but it does work if you need to make or extract a ZIP file. BiGZIP is a very outdated ZIP archiver and extractor, with the last supported Windows OS being Windows 98 (Mac and others are also supported). However, we tested BiGZIP in Windows 10 and Windows 8 without any issues. This file extractor can also convert archives, split archives into smaller pieces, search for files in an archive by name/date/size, and create self-extracting EXE files from ZIP archives. In addition to supporting regular archive file formats like the other programs from this list, Filzip can also open less common ones like UUE, XXE, and ZOO archives. Around 15 file types in total can be opened using Filzip, and it can also create archives in several file formats like ZIP, JAR, CAB, and BH. Adding files and folders to an archive using Filzip is a little more difficult than many of the other programs in this list.
