Subj : Microsoft finally listens to its users by adding this missing Win
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Wed May 24 2023 16:00:03

Microsoft finally listens to its users by adding this missing Windows 11 
feature

Date:
Wed, 24 May 2023 14:43:37 +0000

Description:
Microsoft finally supports RAR file extraction for Windows 11, though 
unfortunately its still missing one key feature.

FULL STORY
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 Windows 11 users will finally be getting a much-requested feature added to 
the OS  native RAR file extraction support built right into it. 

For decades, if you needed to extract files compressed using the historically 
popular RAR format, you had to rely on the free-to-use WinRAR application 
(well, more like an infinite 30-day free trial, but still). While its an 
excellent program thats available in 50 languages and available for multiple 
operating systems, having native support directly in the OS is extremely 
convenient and means one less piece of software cluttering your system. 

Microsoft has now announced that Windows 11 will finally support RAR along 
with several other archive formats. According to Windows Chief Product 
Officer Panos Panay in an official blog post , We have added native support 
for additional archive formats, including tar, 7-zip, rar, gz and many others 
using the libarchive open-source project. 

However, the support only goes halfway. Going by the blog post, you can only 
open RAR files through the OS but not compress them using the same format, 
which means that you might want to keep WinRAR  or some of the other best 
file compression software  installed on your PC until Microsoft gets around 
to fully supporting the file type Incomplete support but theres untapped 
potential 

Though the RAR support is incomplete, its still a step in the right direction 
for Windows 11. No other version of Windows has ever had native support for 
RAR or any other archive format baked into the OS, so supporting so many of 
them now is a pretty huge deal. 

The average user will usually need to only extract RAR files, and thats once 
in a while when downloading some random file that happens to be sealed that 
way. Most peoples needs are more than satisfied using the conventional .zip 
format instead. 

That said, RAR files are still quite popular and should be fully supported 
natively  especially if Microsoft wants Windows 11 to finally overtake 
Windows 10 as the worlds most popular OS. Hopefully, this announcement means 
that Microsoft is already looking into fully supporting all these formats in 
the future, especially since Windows 11 is now using the libarchive 
open-source project to essentially power this. 

For those not familiar with it, the libarchive is an open-source code library 
that can be used by programmers to create and read a wide variety of file 
formats. Microsoft harnessing this project to expand its archive format 
support has so much potential  I just hope the tech giant doesnt squander it.



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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-finally-listens-to-its-users-by-addin
g-this-missing-windows-11-feature


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