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Extract a ZIP archive
Drop a ZIP and you are shown what is inside it before anything is downloaded — names and sizes, so you can take the one file you actually need instead of all forty. It is opened inside your browser, so the archive and its contents never leave your device.
Where it runs
A ZIP archive is read in the browser. Nothing is uploaded.
No queue, no account
It starts the moment you drop the file, and it never asks who you are.
No watermark
What comes out is the file you made, with nothing added to it.
How it works
- Drop the ZIP onto the box above, or press it to choose one.
- Look at what is inside. The listing shows every file and how large it is.
- Download the one you want, or take everything.
- Nothing is uploaded at any point, and nothing is kept afterwards.
Seeing inside before you commit
Most tools that open an archive hand you everything at once. That is fine for three files and tedious for a hundred, and it is actively unhelpful when somebody has sent you a 400 MB archive because you needed one spreadsheet out of it.
The listing here comes first: every file, its name and its size. Download the one you want and leave the rest, which on a phone or a metered connection is the difference between a useful tool and an expensive one.
What this cannot open, and why
ZIP works in the browser because the browser already has what it needs — the deflate decompressor is built in, and the archive structure is a header, the bodies and a directory at the end. Nothing has to be downloaded to read one.
RAR, 7Z, TAR.GZ, BZ2 and XZ are different. Each needs a decoder the browser does not have, and shipping several megabytes of decompressor for a format most visitors will never drop is the wrong trade. Those go through the conversion pages instead, which turn them into ZIP on our server — and the file is identified by its contents, so if you drop one here you are told what it actually is rather than given a vague failure.
An encrypted ZIP is refused for a different reason: without the password there is nothing to read. The same is true of an archive that uses LZMA inside a ZIP container, which is legal and rare and not something the browser can decompress.
Extract a ZIP archive: common questions
Is my archive uploaded?
No. It is opened in your browser and the contents never leave your device — which matters more here than almost anywhere, because an archive is usually several files at once and generally the ones somebody thought worth bundling up.
Can I download just one file from inside?
Yes, and that is the reason the listing comes before the download. Every file inside is shown with its size, so you can take the one you need out of a large archive rather than the whole thing.
Can I open RAR or 7Z here?
Not in the browser. Each needs a decoder the browser does not have, and shipping megabytes of decompressor for a format most visitors never use is the wrong trade. Convert the archive to ZIP on the conversion pages first, then open that.
Why will my password-protected ZIP not open?
Because without the password there is nothing to read — the entries are encrypted, not merely packed. Extract it locally with the password instead.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes, and it is one of the better reasons for the tool to exist. Phones are poor at opening archives and generally insist on unpacking everything, whereas here you can look inside first and take only the file you came for.