What is a 7Z file?
7z is the native format of 7-Zip, the free archiver Igor Pavlov released in 1999. It usually compresses with LZMA or LZMA2 and can treat many small files as one “solid” block, which is why a 7z is often noticeably smaller than a ZIP of the same folder.
Neither Windows Explorer nor the macOS Finder has traditionally opened 7z files without an extra app. ConvertCove extracts them in your browser with libarchive, the same library behind the tar command on macOS and FreeBSD, or repacks the contents as a ZIP. Encrypted 7z files are not supported.
| Extensions | .7z |
|---|---|
| MIME type | application/x-7z-compressed |
| Compression | LZMA, LZMA2, BZip2, Deflate, PPMd |
| Developed by | Igor Pavlov (1999) |
| ConvertCove library | libarchive.js (libarchive) |
Solid 7z archives must be decompressed from the start, so extracting one file from a large archive takes as long as extracting everything.
Convert 7Z to…
Every conversion listed works in the converter above: add a 7Z file and pick the target format.
Detailed guides: 7Z to ZIP
Part of the archive converter · all formats.