Open a RAR file
Most of the time you do not want the whole archive — you want one file out of it, or you want to know what is in it before committing to anything. Installing WinRAR to answer that question is a lot of ceremony.
This opens the RAR and shows you its contents: every entry, its size, whether it is encrypted, whether its path is trying to do something it should not. Then you can extract everything, or tick the files you want.
The archive is read by code running in this tab. It is not uploaded, not queued on a server, and not seen by anyone but you — which also means there is no size limit imposed from outside, only what your own device can hold.
- Step 1Drop a .rar file. RAR 4 and RAR 5 are both read.
- Step 2Browse the file tree. Select individual files or whole folders.
- Step 3Extract the selection as separate downloads, or bundle it into one ZIP.
Drag archives here
.rar— or anything else, and the format will be identified from the file’s own bytes. Files stay on this device.
What this page will not do
Every limit below is a real one, checked against real archives. None of them are upsells — there is no paid tier, and nothing here gets better by signing in.
- Files cannot be previewed, only listed and extracted. A viewer for every file type inside an archive is a different product.
- Encrypted RAR archives cannot be opened. This engine has no RAR decryption, so neither the contents nor — for header-encrypted archives — the file names can be read.
- Split archives are refused rather than partially listed. A .part1.rar will happily show its first few entries and then silently stop, which is worse than an honest refusal.
- Modification dates are not shown for RAR entries: this decoder does not expose them, and a made-up date is worse than a blank.
If it did not work
The file list is empty
Why: Either the archive genuinely has no entries, or its headers are encrypted.
Do this: The message above the list distinguishes the two. Header-encrypted RARs need WinRAR or 7-Zip.
An entry is marked “blocked”
Why: Its stored path tries to escape the output folder — an absolute path, a `..` segment, or a name that becomes one after Unicode normalisation.
Do this: That is a red flag about the archive, not about this tool. The entry is listed with the exact reason and will not be extracted. Everything else still extracts normally.
Downloads stop after the first file
Why: Browsers throttle rapid programmatic downloads, Safari especially.
Do this: Use “Extract selected as ZIP” for more than a handful of files — one download instead of many.
Questions
Do I need WinRAR?
Not to read one. RAR's decompression format is documented and libarchive implements it; that implementation, compiled to WebAssembly, is what runs here. You would still need WinRAR to *create* a RAR, which no free tool can do.
Can I extract just one file?
Yes — that is the main reason to open rather than convert. Tick what you want and only those entries are decompressed.
Is there a size limit?
No server-imposed one, because there is no server. The practical limit is your device's memory; the archive has to fit in the tab. The limits page lists the exact budgets and how they are chosen.