How to open a .RAR file online
No extra software to download or install.
Pick your .RAR file
Drag it in or click to choose it. We read its contents list first, so it opens right away without unpacking everything.
Browse what's inside
See every file with its size, how much it's compressed and its date, and search by name across all the folders.
Preview or download
Click a file to preview text or images, or save just that one. Need everything? Download it all as a single ZIP.
About .RAR files
What a .RAR file is, and what's inside it.
A RAR file is a compressed archive that bundles and shrinks one or more files into a single container, often split into parts or password-protected. To open one for free, use 7-Zip on Windows, Keka or The Unarchiver on Mac, or unrar/unar on Linux. Only WinRAR can create new RAR files; free tools extract RAR but compress to ZIP or 7z instead.
Programs that open .RAR files
| Full name | RAR Archive (Roshal ARchive) |
|---|---|
| Developer | Eugene Roshal / win.rar GmbH (RARLAB) |
| First released | 1993 (RAR 1.0); RAR4 format ~2002; RAR5 format 2013 (WinRAR 5.0) |
| Category | Archives |
| MIME type | application/vnd.rar |
| Signature | 52 61 72 21 1A 07 "Rar!" followed by 1A 07 |
Related viewers
Found something inside the archive? Open it here.
Do I have to unpack the whole .RAR file?
No. The viewer reads its table of contents first and only unpacks a file when you click it. That works even with multi-gigabyte archives, because we read just the bytes we need.
Can I open password-protected archives?
Yes, for ZIP (ZipCrypto and AES) and 7Z. You'll be asked for the password,. We can't recover forgotten passwords.
Is my .RAR file uploaded anywhere?
No. The code that unpacks the file is downloaded once and then reused.
Why does a .docx or .apk open as an archive?
Because they are ZIP archives under the hood. Office documents, Android apps, Java programs and EPUB books all use ZIP as their container.
What about split archives (.001, .z01, .part1.rar)?
Multi-part archives need all their parts. Today you can open the first part to see the file list; joining parts is on our roadmap.
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