Extract ZIP File

Opening an archive before you trust it

The most useful thing about unpacking a ZIP in a browser tab is that nothing is written to your disk until you choose it. You drop the archive in, the contents are listed with names and sizes, and you decide what comes out. Everything runs in your browser, so your files never leave your device.

That matters when someone emails you an archive and you want to know what is inside before it lands in your Downloads folder. The listing shows every entry's full path and uncompressed size, so an archive that claims to hold an invoice but actually contains a run of executables or shortcut files is obvious at a glance. Nothing inside an archive can execute here, because the contents are only ever read as data.

Directory entries are hidden from the list, since they contain no data. You see files only.

Previewing without extracting

Entries the tool recognises get a Preview button. Images render inline: PNG, JPG, GIF, WEBP, BMP, SVG and ICO. Text-based files are shown as plain text, which covers TXT, MD, JSON, CSV, TSV, XML, HTML, CSS, YAML, INI and a long list of source code extensions including JS, TS, PY, JAVA, C, CPP, RB, GO, RS, PHP, SH and SQL.

Text previews stop at 500,000 characters and say so at the cut, which keeps a giant log file from freezing the tab. Anything the tool does not recognise, such as a DOCX, XLSX or PDF, shows a note saying there is no inline preview and offers the download button instead.

This is genuinely handy for a very ordinary job: you have three similarly named backup archives and you want to know which one contains the version of the spreadsheet you need. Open each, preview the CSV, and only download the right one.

Taking one file instead of all of them

Every entry has its own Download button. If a 900 MB archive of project assets contains one 40 KB configuration file you actually need, you can pull just that out. There is no way to do this with the built-in extractor on most systems without unpacking the whole thing first.

Extracted file names are flattened when you download a single entry. An entry stored as reports/2024/q3.csv saves as q3.csv, because browsers will not write into subfolders of your Downloads directory.

Why Download all gives you back a ZIP

Browsers cannot hand you a folder. A page can trigger one file download at a time, and firing forty of them in a row gets blocked and buries you in permission prompts. So Download all repackages the entries it read into a fresh archive named after the original with a suffix, and gives you that single file.

The practical consequence is that the new archive is re-compressed at level 6 rather than preserving whatever settings the original used, so its size may differ slightly from the file you started with. The file contents themselves are byte-identical. Once it is on your disk, your operating system's own right-click extract will unpack it into a proper folder tree.

Archives this tool cannot open

Password-protected and encrypted ZIP files are not supported. The contents are scrambled and there is nowhere to enter a password, so you will get a clear error rather than a partial result. Decrypt the archive with the software that created it first.

Other archive formats are not ZIP files despite doing a similar job. RAR, 7z, TAR, TAR.GZ and TGZ all use different container layouts and different compression, and none of them will open here. The tool checks the extension and asks for a .zip file.

A truncated or partially downloaded archive will also fail, because the central directory that lists the contents sits at the end of a ZIP file. If a download was interrupted, that index is missing and there is nothing to read. Download the archive again.

Memory sets the final limit. The compressed archive and all of its uncompressed contents have to fit in the browser tab at the same time, so peak usage can be several times the size of the file you dropped in. The page warns past 100 MB. A text-heavy archive is the worst case here, since 100 MB of compressed logs can expand to well over a gigabyte.

After you unpack

If the archive turned out to hold data you want to work with, CSV to JSON handles tabular exports, and Compress Image to KB is useful when the images inside are far larger than they need to be. To build a new archive from the files you kept, use Create ZIP.

Questions

Can it open a password-protected ZIP?

No. Encrypted archives cannot be read here and will show an error. Decrypt the file with the tool that created it, then open the result.

Does it open RAR or 7z files?

No. Those are different formats with their own compression. Only standard .zip archives are supported.

Why does Download all give me another ZIP instead of a folder?

A web page cannot create folders on your computer. Repackaging into one archive is the only way to hand over many files in a single download, and your operating system can unpack it normally.

Are the folder paths inside the archive preserved?

They are shown in the listing and kept in the Download all archive, but a single-file download saves with just the file name, without its parent folders.

Why did a large archive fail to open?

Most likely memory. Everything inside has to be decompressed into the browser tab at once, and highly compressible content can expand many times over. Try a desktop browser with other tabs closed.