Anchor
Unzip 2x faster than 7-Zip and WinRAR, for free
Start new thread

Anchor - Unzip 2x faster than 7-Zip and WinRAR, for free

by•
Anchor is a free archive tool for Windows that's built to be faster and safer than 7-Zip and WinRAR. • 2× faster on archives with many files (4,000-file ZIP: 2.55 s vs 5.87 s in 7-Zip) • Open a ZIP from a link and browse it before downloading • Repairs broken or cut-off downloads • Flags disguised programs and zip bombs before extracting • Nothing half-written: Undo any extraction • Modern UI, dark/light, 8 languages No ads, no accounts, no tracking.

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Maker
📌
Hey Product Hunt! I'm the maker of Anchor. I built it because unzipping on Windows always felt slower than it should be. It turns out Windows spends most of an extraction creating files, since antivirus checks each one as it's closed. 7-Zip and WinRAR write files one at a time; Anchor decodes the archive once and writes up to 32 files in parallel. On a ZIP with 4,000 small files that's 2.55 s, against 5.87 s for 7-Zip and 5.25 s for WinRAR. With a few big files all three are about the same, so I won't pretend otherwise. A few things I haven't seen elsewhere: - Paste a ZIP's link and browse it right away. Only the files you open are downloaded. - Broken or cut-off downloads get rebuilt from whatever is still readable. - Before anything touches your disk, it flags things like invoice.pdf.exe and zip bombs. - Files only appear once everything worked, and Undo takes them back. It's free, with no ads, accounts or tracking. One honest note: the installer isn't code-signed yet (certificates are pricey for a solo dev), so Windows shows a SmartScreen warning: More info -> Run anyway. Every release lists SHA-256 checksums and a VirusTotal scan. I'd love to hear: - Which archive does Anchor open slowly or get wrong? - What would make you switch from 7-Zip or WinRAR for good? I'll be here all day answering questions. Thanks for checking it out!