what is a 7z file

A 7z file is a compressed/archived file format created using the 7-Zip compression tool. It 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. The 7z format is newer than the ZIP file format and provides a high level of compression. The compression is achieved by looking for similarities throughout the data using a stacked combination of filters, which can consist of pre-processors, compression algorithms, and encryption filters. The core 7z compression uses a variety of algorithms, the most common of which are bzip2, PPMd, LZMA2, and LZMA. The 7z file format is open and modular, and file names are stored as Unicode. 7z 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. To open a 7z file, you can use the 7-Zip tool, which is a free, open-source tool that makes it easier to view these files.