Ahoy, matey! Windows 11 will soon have native RAR support

Pour one out for WinRAR because Microsoft just announced Windows 11 will natively support RAR and a bunch of other archive formats that Windows users have been waiting decades for. Perfect if ye be swimmin’ in lots o’ files, if ye catch me drift.

“We have added native support for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others using the libarchive open-source project,” says Windows chief Panos Panay in a blog post today. “You now can get improved performance of archive functionality during compression on Windows.”

It’s not clear exactly when this native RAR support will be available in Windows 11, but Microsoft’s blog appears to suggest it’s imminent, so it could well be part of the upcoming Windows 11 update that’s arriving tomorrow. We’ve asked Microsoft for clarification around the timing.

Either way, the addition of tar, 7-zip, rar, gz, and others is great for Windows 11 users. You’ll no longer have to install third-party apps to access these files. Hopefully, the integration is a little better than the native ZIP support, though.