What is a .RAR file?
RAR is a compressed archive format. Created by WinRAR and opened by WinRAR, 7-Zip and others.
- Did you know
- WinRAR’s RAR format was created by Russian developer Eugene Roshal in 1993 - the name means Roshal Archive.
- RAR uses a proprietary LZ-based algorithm that is not licensed to third-party compressors, so other tools may decompress RAR files but cannot create them.
- Analyser spots a .RAR file by its signature bytes
52 61 72 21- ASCII for "Rar!".
- What Analyser shows you
- Browse the file tree and compression details of archives without extracting them: ZIP in pure JavaScript, and RAR, 7z, TAR and compressed tarballs (.tar.gz / .tgz, .tar.xz, .tar.zst, .tar.bz2) through a bundled libarchive engine - click any file inside to analyse it. A single compressed stream (.gz, .xz, .zst, .lz4, .lzma, .Z) is decompressed so the file within can be opened; bare .bz2 streams are identified only.
- Open a .RAR file
- Drag a .RAR file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It opens entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.