Archives as folders

Archives in .zip, .7z, .rar and other formats that Windows can open work as folders: a path in the address bar, Backspace to go up, sorting, search by name, photo thumbnails. This works even if your archives are associated with 7-Zip or WinRAR. In the tree, an archive appears among folders and expands the same way.

Extracting files works the same as copying them from a regular folder:

• copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) into a folder, or drag, including onto a folder in the Folders pane; Ctrl+Z undoes the extraction;
• “Extract here” in the menu of a file or of the archive itself extracts without asking into the folder that contains the archive; matching names aren't replaced, and the new item gets “(1)”;
• “Extract…” asks for a folder first.

You can also copy or drag files from an archive to other programs as usual.

Viewing. The Preview pane shows the archive's contents, and previews a file inside it like any other file (up to 32 MB). “Open” extracts the file to a temporary copy and opens it in its program; changes to that copy don't go back into the archive.

Limitations. Archives are read-only: you can't delete, rename, move or create anything inside. Search by text doesn't look inside archives. In a password-protected archive, you see the file names but not the contents: “Open” on a file from it says that the archive is password-protected, and a fully encrypted archive looks empty.