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How to open RAR, 7z and ZIP files on your phone

Open ZIP, RAR, 7z, TAR, GZ and ISO files on Android or a PC, look inside without extracting, open a single file, or extract everything, for free and without ads.

Folders team3 min read

A ZIP archive open in Folders, listing the photos inside with their sizes

A download finishes and you’re left with Holiday photos.zip, project.rar or backup.7z. Many phones can’t open RAR or 7z at all, and the apps that can are often full of ads or ask you to extract everything before you can see what’s inside.

In Folders, an archive opens like a folder. Tap it and you see what’s inside, with sizes and dates, before anything is unpacked.

Open an archive

  1. Find the file (it’s usually in Download). You can type .zip or .rar into the search box at the top of a folder.
  2. Tap it. Folders shows the archive’s contents and a summary at the top, for example ZIP · 6 files · 700 KB → 697 KB (99%): how many files are inside, how big they are unpacked, and how much the archive saved.
  3. Tap any file inside to open it straight away: a photo, a PDF, a video, even a 3D model. Folders unpacks just that one file for you.

Big archive? Use Search in archive to find a file by name, and Sort to change the order of the list. Archive info shows the details of the archive itself.

Extract files

  • Extract all unpacks the whole archive into a folder of your choice.
  • To extract only some files, select them and choose Extract selected.

Folders shows the progress while it extracts, and you can cancel at any time.

Which archive types work?

Type Extensions
ZIP family ZIP, JAR, WAR, AAR, XAPK, APKS
RAR RAR
7-Zip 7Z
Tar and compressed tar TAR, GZ, TGZ, BZ2, TBZ, TBZ2, XZ, TXZ
Disk images ISO
Comic archives CBZ, CBR, CB7, CBT (open in the comic reader)

Comic book archives are really ZIP, RAR or 7z files with pictures inside, so Folders opens them as comics, page by page, instead of as a list of files.

Make a ZIP

Going the other way is just as easy. Select files or folders, open the menu and choose Compress to ZIP. That’s the format every phone and computer can open, so it’s the best choice for sending a bundle of files to someone.

(RAR is a closed format: you can open RAR files in Folders, but like most apps, Folders makes ZIP files rather than RAR.)

On Windows and Linux

Folders works the same way on a computer: double-click an archive to browse it, open a single file, or extract it. If you’ve been installing a separate archiver just to peek inside a RAR or 7z, you may not need it any more.

Questions people ask

Why can’t I open an APK file? An APK is an app installer, so Folders hands it to Android’s installer instead of opening it as an archive. Split-app bundles (.xapk, .apks) are archives, though, and you can look inside them.

Do I need to extract a file to view it? No. Tapping a file inside the archive opens it directly.

Where do extracted files go? Into the folder you choose when you extract.

Once you’ve unpacked a big download, you might end up with the same photos twice. The duplicate finder finds those copies for you.

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