A new version of PeaZip, version 11.0, has landed, bringing speed improvements for browsing large archives, a new batch testing function for archives, a handy password strength checker, and a number of drag and drop enhancements.
Starting with the file manager, the developers added a "Batch test archives" function. You can find this in the Test dropdown menu, and it lets you verify multiple archives at once without interruption, except for password prompts. The results, success or failure, get reported right in the CRC column of the file manager.
The GTK2 build now enables its virtual mode by default when a directory contains over 16,000 items, which helps manage system resources better. You can now drop items directly onto the breadcrumb navigation bar or the tab bar to extract, copy, or move them. Another change is that the internal "Copy to" and "Move to" operations no longer switch your current directory.
A small UI revamp includes alternative icon rendering styles, with "Native", "Sharp", and "Soft" options to help the application"s look blend better on different systems. Finally, the built-in password manager got a new UI and a function to rate your password"s entropy, which also appears in the main password prompt.
Speed on large archives has been improved quite a bit. The application"s browser optimization levels were tweaked to offer more consistent performance across different archive types. The archive pre-parsing step is now up to 87% faster on archives where the table of contents is not ordered by name. For massive archives containing over one hundred thousand items, the improvement is even more dramatic, with a reduction in processing time of up to 94%. The archive"s treeview rendering is also 30% faster than before, according to the changelog. Here"s a list of bug fixes this release brings:
- Fixed auto ask password for encrypted ARC files
- Fixed inconsistencies of icons for Bookmarks, Session history, and Tabs
- Fixed preserve archive breadcrumb on forced refresh events
- Fixed translation of special folders names in Bookmarks
- Prevented starting multiple "auto open tar" events in compressed tar.* archives, unless the archive is closed and reopened.
PeaZip was launched nearly 20 years ago and over the years has grown into a very capable archive and file manager. It operates as a graphical frontend for numerous open source archiving technologies, including 7-Zip/p7zip, FreeArc, PAQ/ZPAQ, and its native PEA format. This allows it to extract over 200 archive formats and write to popular ones like 7Z, ZIP, TAR, and Zstd.
Its main advantage over the likes of 7-Zip and WinRAR is that it operates as a full-featured file manager, complete with a modern interface, breadcrumb navigation, bookmarking, a duplicate file finder, an integrated image thumbnail viewer, and customizable UI themes. PeaZip is open source and available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.