Considered to be the third most widely used and best reputed file compression software, PeaZip is actually at the very top of the open-source/free file compression software list. This tool can read and extract nearly all existing archive file formats and create new compressed files both in its own format (PEA) and in some of the most common ones, ZIP and 7Z included.
Why PeaZip appears below WinZip and WinRAR on the above-mentioned list is simply beyond me. Those two not only ask for a license fee to unleash their full potential, but they also lack the functionality that PeaZip offers you for free. They are all secure, efficient, and reliable, but, amazingly, some users still prefer to pay for roughly the same functions they could enjoy free of charge. If curious, you can take a look at some of the benchmark tests available, and you’ll find that PeaZip can compress and decompress a ZIP file faster than WinZip itself...
PeaZip has been around since 2006, and it is considered by experts to be the file compression tool with the best file support rate. It is, by far, the program that can read and open more archive formats – over 150, a figure that no paid or free competitor can beat. It can also create ZIP, 7Z, ARC, TAR, and WIM archives (among others), and offers you its own high-quality compression algorithm and format, PEA, with AES256 EAX authenticated encryption. All the most highly rated encryption standards are supported for 7Z, ZIP, ARC, and PEA files, and even for RAR if it happens to be installed on your system. And the great thing is that being an open-source development, PeaZip improves its numbers on every iteration, especially regarding processing speeds and RAM usage.
What I love about PeaZip is that on top of performing as the high-end compression tool that it is, it comes with a plethora of other utilities. And I’m not referring just to PeaUtils, useful as this set of tools is, but to its archive converter, its password manager, its secure random password creator, its archive analyzer, its duplicate file finder, its file splitter and joiner, etc. The list is too long to reproduce here, so – being a free tool – I’ll leave the rest for you to discover.
PeaZip is, undoubtedly, everything you need to open and create archive files with the best compression algorithms and the highest level of security. And if that is not enough to make you download and install it on your desktop, think of the wealth of other utilities and features that come with it at no cost whatsoever.
v6.4 [Mar 27, 2017]
- Added experimental privacy_mode directive (at current state can be changed only from configuration file, or hardcoded at compile time) meant to help users not forgetting to provide a password when working on sensitive data.
- Rightclicking on file manager's column header shows context menu for
customizing columns; applying on the fly checksum/hash, search for duplicates, and set algorithm for those two functions; and save GUI content as tab-separated TXT file.
- Clicking the style icon on the right of the status bar shows menu of presets for file manager.
- Style icon now changes reflecting the style applied to the file manager.
- New "Navigation bar" entry in status bar menu show/hide side navigation bar.
- Drag and drop information floyout changes alpha blending level when a valid drop target is detected.
- Some keyboard shortcuts were updated.
- Various improvements in archive browsing.
- Various improvements of UI usability with custom system colors.
- During archive update only relevant options are shown, allowing to set password and to change action (add, update, freshen, sync).
- Improved Windows installer and re-configuration wizard.
- Added system's context menu hotkeys for most used entries.
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