- Quick specs
- Price: Free to try (40-day trial, some features disabled); $29.00 to buy
- Operating system: Windows 95, Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 98
- Date added: August 16, 2006
- Total Downloads: 80,440,900
- Downloads last week: 343,185
- See full specifications
A newer version of WinRAR is available.
(Download doesn't provide access to previous versions of this program.)
- CNET editors' rating: stars
- Average user rating: stars out of 1364 votes
See all user reviews
CNET editors' review
Reviewed by: CNET Staff
There are plenty of solid compression utilities to choose from, but this shareware powerhouse offers the features and ease of use that might place it at the top of its category. WinRAR is easy to use, lightweight, and flexible. An intuitive interface lets you mouse over icons to see their functions and if you don't like their candy-coated appearance, you can always choose from several themes at the developer's site. The Folder Tree Panel, a recent addition to the interface, makes sifting through your directories to find files for archiving easier than ever. But once you see the size savings of a RAR archive (with a compression ratio of 8 percent to 15 percent better than the ZIP format), you'll understand why so many users and developers are making the switch from other compression apps. You might even be prepared to forgive the slightly slower decompression speeds and lack of integrated virus protection.
Beyond its good looks and right-click readiness for basic compression and unzipping, WinRAR offers unpacking support for a large number of archive formats, including ACE, BZ2, JAR, ISO, and ZIP. WinRAR's advanced features are icing on the cake, with Unicode support for international formatting, embedded file comments, repair of damaged archives, archive locking, self-extracting archives, and easy encryption. Anyone seeking an all-in-one archiving solution would be remiss to not evaluate WinRAR.
Watch the CNET video review of WinRAR:
Publisher's description
From RARLAB :WinRAR is a 32-bit Windows version of RAR Archiver, an archiver and archive manager. RAR files can usually compress content by 8 percent to 15 percent more than ZIP files can. WinRAR's main features include strong general and multimedia compression, the ability to process non-RAR archive formats, ZIP compression and decompression, support for long filenames, programmable self-extracting archives (SFX), repair of damaged archives, authenticity verification, embedded file comments, and encryption. Unicode is supported in archive filenames, allowing non-English filenames to be handled painlessly. You can manipulate the parameters of many archives at once and view a volume sequence as a single archive. WinRAR can convert other archive formats to RAR and search for specified text and files in archives.
The latest update adds a multithreaded version of the RAR compression algorithm, as well as a folder tree panel for navigating disk and archive folders.
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User reviews of WinRAR 3.60
- Average user rating: 4.1 stars out of 1364 votes
- My rating: 0 stars Write review
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Showing 5 of 31 user reviewsSee all 31 user reviews
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6 out of 8 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.60
Pros: Quick and customizable installation. No lag at all when starting up, quick compressing and decompressing. Range of formats supported. Interface easy to follow and free of clutter. Background archiving option is excellent and does not disturb other activites. Splitting of archives option and various other more advanced controls are excellent and make this program feature full, functional, useful and the king of it's area.
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Version: WinRAR 3.60
Pros: Has better compression ratio than winzip for some files, but this has a better interface and user usability.
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3 out of 4 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.60
Pros: i have used many others but they couldn't as good as WinRar
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1 out of 2 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.60
Pros: i make my machine safe from a lot of viruses by cryption..n also reduces size to more than 60 %
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2 out of 3 people found this review helpful
Version: WinRAR 3.60
Pros: This utility tool is realy good and adds up to the better performence of your computer by giving great compression and its easy to use GUI
Cons: It would have been better if it was free
- See all 31 user reviews Write review
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