
Pretty much every system out there has a way to open ZIP files, and using 7Z files means people actually need to install 7-Zip or another third-party app that supports them to work with the files. 7z file is an archive format that stands for 7-zip you can think of it like any other archive file. The main reason for this is compatibility. They also support ridiculous file sizes-theoretically up to 16 billion GB!ħ-Zip is one of the more popular compression tools out there, but most people use it to open or create ZIP files rather than using the more proprietary 7Z files. RELATED: How to Password Protect Files and Folders With EncryptionħZ files make it easy to send and download files from the internet and help free up space on your hard drive with their high compression rate used when archiving. 7Z is similar to other archived formats, such as ZIP, TAR.GZ, RAR, and ISO, but uses a higher compression ratio, along with AES-256 encryption.

7Z is the file extension used for an archived file created using 7-Zip, a free, open-source file compression tool.
