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.
v7.8 [Mar 21, 2021]
BACKEND
- UPX was removed from Windows packages due the amount of false positives triggered in (low quality) security software; it is possible to add UPX support installing Additional Formats Plugin, or downloading and copying the most up to date UPX executable in res\upx subfolder in PeaZip's directory.
CODE
- Command line -ext2simple and -ext2simplefolder can now accept also empthy output path (extract to archive's path).
-ext2simplefolder as -ext2folder (switch -*folder) apply smart folder policy, while -ext2simple and -ext2here ignores it.
- Updated web search (Ctrl+Alt+F3).
- Updated Windows installers to work with recent versions of InnoSetup (.exe) and MSIWrapper (.msi).
- Various fixes:
- CPUAARCH64 now disable Intel ASM to allow build on ARM64 architectures
fixed adding multiple .enc suffix.
- fixed various issues with non-English localizations.
- fixed issue with preview for special file types (bat, exe, html) resulting in extraction instead of preview.
- improved handling special characters in password for arc, rar, and pea formats.
- (Linux) improved handling of special characters in filenames.
- (Linux) fixed issues with smart folder option.
EXTRACTION and ARCHIVING
- PEA compression and decompression can now be cancelled from the GUI.
