How To Open 7z Files Instantly – Setapp

Efficient compression and decompression 7z file: Mac user guide

Since the early days of software and computers, people have been working hard to reduce the size of files. Initially, this was because of the high storage costs, and a few megabytes of hard drives cost hundreds of dollars!

Even today, when SSDs and cloud storage can be measured in terabytes, we are not too keen on using and paying more than we need. If you think about all the photos and videos we store, sometimes we have to pay a lot for it.

Additionally, we want the files to work properly when transferred via email and the folders are kept intact. Have you ever encountered a situation where you email a folder but it is empty when it arrives?

The solution to all these problems is archive. By compressing files and folders into archives, we can not only reduce their size, but also keep the original relationship between files.

There are many archive solutions available, and the more popular ones you may be familiar with are ZIP and RAR. But there are some other ones, such as .7z files.

7z is an archive file format created by Igor Pavlov in 1999, with the main purpose of improving the compression technology used in ZIP and RAR. The code is open source and has been downloaded hundreds of millions of times since its release.

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Free trial security test So, if you encounter .7z archives, how to decompress? First of all, why use .7z files? Let's discuss it.

• How to decompress 7z archive by default on Mac
• How to open a 7z file without decompression
• How to create, convert and split 7z archives

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Why use 7z archive?

Unlike many other archive formats, 7z has almost universally praised for its efficient and significant file compression.

But that's not all. Here are some more benefits of using 7z:

• It is based on an open source and modular architecture, allowing anyone to add to their stack
• It allows industry-class AES-256 encryption
• It supports large (almost unlimited) file size
• It uses Unicode filename
• It compresses files into a single stream to avoid redundancy
• It can split the archive into multiple parts

In other words, when you are looking for professional archive tools, the 7z decompressor should be at the top of your list. Unfortunately, the official 7z file opening program created by Pavlov - 7-Zip - is not available on Mac. So, if there is no 7Zip Mac implementation, how do you open these files?

How to decompress 7z archive by default on Mac

Unlike Windows, macOS can unzip .7z files using a built-in application called "Archive Utility" even without 7-Zip.

To open a 7z file:

1. Find the .7z file on your Mac
2. Open the right-click menu
3. Select "Open With" ➙ "Archive Utility"

The file should be unzipped in the same location.

This is basically a limitation of Archive Utility. For example, you can't use it to create a 7z archive, thus getting all the benefits mentioned above. You can't perform other powerful operations, such as viewing the archive's internals without decompressing, setting a password, or splitting the archive into multiple parts or converting the archive to other formats, etc. To do this, you need to use some high-quality third-party applications like BetterZip and Archiver.

How to open a 7z file without decompression

Many times, especially when you compress multiple files into a single archive, you may want to look at some of them and open them without decompressing the entire archive – mainly to avoid collecting individual files again and zipping them again. While Archive Utility can't do this, you can do it with other applications like BetterZip.

BetterZip is a powerful archive manager that not only supports decompression and creation of more than 30 file formats, but also allows you to rename files in archives, set passwords, and preview documents with Quick Look.

The last feature is especially interesting. So, here is how to read files inside a 7z archive without decompression:

1. Start BetterZip
2. Drag and drop your archive onto the app
3. Double-click the files to open them, or use the spacebar to quickly view them with Quick Look

How to create, convert and split 7z archives

Viewing files in archives is very useful for those who often process compressed files. But what about creating your own 7Zip Mac archive or converting it to another format or splitting it into multiple parts? A powerful utility called Archiver can do all of this in seconds.

Archiver is one of the most intuitive compressors and decompressors on your Mac. Its beautiful and simple interface makes it very easy to archive operations. Additionally, Archiver allows you to customize compression preferences, set passwords, split large archives, and more.

Here is how to create an archive of .7z files using Archiver:

1. Start Archiver
2. Drag and drop all files you wish to archive onto the application
3. Select Archive in the bottom bar
4. Select 7ZIP as the format
5. Set compression level or keep archive lossless
6. Select Encryption to set password protection
7. When you are ready, click Archive

If you already have a 7z archive, you can drag and drop it into the Archiver application, convert it to another format in a similar way, or split it into sections of a specific file size. You can do all of these by selecting the corresponding button from the bottom bar.

As you can see, managing 7z archives doesn't have to be frightening or difficult. In fact, you can turn them on by default using the Archive Utility of Mac. However, if you need more control, download BetterZip to view the files you want without decompressing them, or download Archiver to create, convert and manage archives efficiently.

Best of all, you can use BetterZip and Archiver for seven days with the Setapp trial, a platform with over 210 world-class Mac applications for any day-to-day tasks you can imagine, from writing code to recovering deleted files. Try each Setapp application for free today and start organizing your life with the help of the best tools!

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