Look inside a ZIP, 7z or RAR and take out one file, on your own device

On a borrowed laptop, a locked-down work PC, a Chromebook or a phone, an archive often will not open, or wants you to unpack all of it. Drop it here to see every file inside with its size, date and whether it is locked, then save just the one you need, or open it right here: a CSV, spreadsheet, Word file, SQLite database, photo or font inside the archive opens in viewhack's own viewer.

The archive is read on your device. It is never uploaded, and a password you type never leaves this tab.

What it shows

The whole tree without unpacking it. Folders open and close; every file shows its size, its packed size and how much it shrank, its date, and an encrypted mark when it is locked. A search box finds a file by name in archives of thousands.
What each file really is. The first bytes of each file are read and named (a “report.pdf” that is really a Windows program says so), not just the extension.
One file out, not all of them. Tap a file: only that file is unpacked, then Save it, or open it in place when viewhack has a viewer for it: CSV, Excel and ODS, Word and ODT, SQLite, Parquet, PSD, fonts, 3D models, .eml and .msg e-mails, EPUB and HEIC.
Archives inside archives open as folders in the same tree, up to 3 levels deep (a ZIP in a ZIP in a ZIP in the one you chose). Deeper ones can be saved and opened on their own.
Password-protected ZIPs. The names and sizes show at once (a ZIP does not hide them); type the password in the page to unpack the files. Both the old ZipCrypto and the AES-128/256 encryption of 7-Zip and WinZip are read.
Formats: ZIP and ZIP64 (also JAR and APK, which are ZIPs), 7z, RAR 4 and RAR 5, tar, and tar compressed with gzip (.tar.gz, .tgz), XZ (.tar.xz), bzip2 (.tar.bz2) or Zstandard (.tar.zst), plus a single .gz or .zst file.

What it cannot do

Multi-volume or split archives. A set such as photos.part1.rar + part2.rar, backup.7z.001 + .002, or data.z01 + data.zip is not joined. One RAR part is listed and the files wholly inside it open; a split 7z or ZIP is named as such. Put every part in one folder and open the first with 7-Zip, WinRAR, Keka or The Unarchiver.
Archives larger than the tab's memory. ZIP and tar archives (also .tar.gz and .tar.zst) are read a piece at a time, so a ZIP of many gigabytes is listed by reading only its table of contents, and only the file you tap is unpacked into memory. 7z, RAR, .tar.xz and .tar.bz2 go through libarchive, which copies the whole archive into the tab's memory: up to 2 GB at most, and on a phone often far less before the browser gives up.
Encryption the library rejects. Password-protected 7z and RAR archives are listed when their file names are not encrypted, and the locked files are marked, but their contents cannot be decrypted here: libarchive 3.7.2, the decoder viewhack uses, has no 7z or RAR decryption. When the names are encrypted too (“Encrypt file names” in 7-Zip or WinRAR), not even the list shows. PKWARE's own “strong encryption” in ZIP is not read either.
Some compressed files on their own. A lone .xz or .bz2 that is not a tar archive (a dump.sql.xz) cannot be unpacked; a lone .gz or .zst can. LZ4, CAB, ISO, DMG, .deb and .rpm are named but not opened.
Dates for every format. ZIP, RAR and tar (with .tar.gz and .tar.zst) show each file's date. For 7z, .tar.xz and .tar.bz2 the decoder does not report dates, so none is shown rather than a wrong one.
Making or changing archives, or “extract all”. It only reads. Files are saved one at a time.

Useful to know about archives

Why a ZIP lists instantly but a .tar.gz does not: A ZIP compresses every file on its own and keeps a table of contents, the central directory, at the very end of the file. Reading that table is enough to list the archive, and any one file can be unpacked without touching the others. A .tar.gz is the other way round: tar strings the files together end to end, then gzip compresses the whole string as one stream, so listing it means decompressing all of it, and the last file can only be reached through every file before it.
Why a ZIP that stopped downloading will not open: Because that table of contents is at the end, a ZIP cut short by a failed download has no list at all. A .tar.gz cut short still lists every file up to the break, and this page shows them.
Solid 7z and RAR archives: 7-Zip and WinRAR usually compress many files together as one block (“solid”), which makes the archive smaller. The price: to take out one file, the decoder unpacks everything before it in the block, and there is no packed size per file, only per block.
ZIP passwords: Even with a password, a ZIP's file names, sizes and dates are stored in the clear; only the contents are encrypted. The old ZipCrypto method, still the default in many tools and the only one the classic zip -e command offers, is weak: a known-plaintext attack published in 1994 breaks it. AES-256, offered by 7-Zip and WinZip, is not known to be breakable. 7z and RAR can also encrypt the names.
ZIP64 and the 4 GB line: The original ZIP format stores sizes and offsets in 32 bits, so no file or archive could pass 4 GiB (4,294,967,295 bytes), nor hold more than 65,535 entries. ZIP64 extends those fields to 64 bits. Very old unzip tools fail on ZIP64 archives; this page reads them.
Why ZIP dates have no time zone: ZIP's basic date field comes from MS-DOS: local clock time in 2-second steps, with no time zone. A ZIP made in Tokyo and opened in Oslo shows the Tokyo clock time. Many tools add an extra field with the exact UTC time; when it is there, the date is shown in your own time zone instead.
__MACOSX and ._ files: ZIPs made with the Mac's Archive Utility contain a __MACOSX folder of ._name files: Finder metadata and resource forks for the real files. They are safe to ignore on other systems.
What your computer opens by itself: Windows, macOS, ChromeOS and the Files app on iPhone and iPad unpack ZIP. Windows 11 added 7z, RAR and tar in its 2023 updates; older Windows needs 7-Zip. macOS Archive Utility does not open RAR or 7z; The Unarchiver and Keka do.