Microsoft already predicted us last year, plans to provide Windows 11 with native support for multiple compression formats files. We had the first news about it about a year ago, and we saw the first effective step in this direction in the fall, when a system update brought support for decompressing files in various formats, such as the very popular Rar and 7-Zip. .

Of course, as we said at the time, This support for all these formats is functionally limited, that is, it is possible to decompress files (if they are not password protected) and nothing more. This means that we avoid the need to use a specific application only if our only need is to decompress and occasionally compress in Zip format, also without the possibility of modifying the process and the resulting file.

However, it now appears that this was only the first part of the plan, the second phase of which is already underway. Today, Preview Build 22635.3640 was released to the Insiders beta channel, and checking out the new features included, we see that Windows 11 is starting to test support for 7-zip and TAR file compressionwhich are added to the already present Zip I mentioned earlier.

In addition to adding these new compression formats, and as we can read in the mentioned publication, Windows 11 will also have a guide that will improve the current one, because will allow you to make some adjustments to the resulting files. This is what they suggest about it:

«In addition to ZIP, we’ve added support for creating 7-zip and TAR archives via the context menu in File Explorer. We’ve also added a new compression wizard that lets you choose even more formats and enter even more details. You can compress individual files with gzip/bzip2 (and more) or add multiple files to archives in different tar formats with different types of compression. You can also change the compression level and the types of data stored in each file.»

With these new features, there is no doubt that Windows 11 supports file compression takes a huge leap and while we’ll have to see what settings will eventually be offered, it’s possible that with this upgrade, the use of an external compressor-decompressor will no longer be necessary, as the vast majority of users will see their needs met in this regard. with which it is now being tested in the beta channel.