How do I open a RAR file on iPhone?
You need an app that bundles a RAR decoder — iOS cannot do it alone. The Files app handles ZIP and nothing else: long-press a .zip and "Uncompress" appears, long-press a .rar and it does not. RAR is a proprietary format and Apple has never licensed or implemented it. And while we are here: nothing on your iPhone can create a RAR, and no app that claims to is telling you the truth.
Why the Files app refuses
iOS has had built-in ZIP support since iOS 13, and it works fine: long-press a file or a selection and choose Compress; long-press a .zip and choose Uncompress. No app required.
That support is ZIP-specific. It is not a general archive engine, and it was never extended. RAR is a proprietary format owned by RARLAB — the makers of WinRAR — and Apple has neither implemented it nor licensed it. So a .rar in your Files app is an inert lump: no preview, no Uncompress option, nothing. The same is true of 7z, TAR, and everything else that is not ZIP.
To open one you need an app that has a RAR decoder compiled into it. Most that do use libarchive, the open-source archive library, which can read RAR perfectly well.
RAR4 and RAR5 are not the same format
This catches people constantly and is worth ten seconds of your attention.
WinRAR 5 (released in 2013) introduced a new archive format, usually called RAR5. It is not a version bump — it is a different format with a different compression scheme, and a decoder written for RAR4 cannot read it.
Plenty of older free tools, and a surprising number of mobile apps, only ever implemented RAR4. Hand one a RAR5 archive and you get a confusing, unhelpful failure: "corrupt archive", "unsupported", "unknown error", or an extraction that produces nothing. The archive is fine. The tool is simply reading a format it does not know.
If a RAR will not open and you are told it is corrupt, this is the first thing to suspect — especially with an archive made in the last decade, which is overwhelmingly likely to be RAR5. Try a tool that explicitly states RAR5 support.
Nothing can create a RAR except WinRAR. Not on iPhone, not anywhere.
RAR's compression algorithm is proprietary and RARLAB has never licensed it for third-party encoders. The specification for decoding is published — which is why libarchive, 7-Zip and everything else can open RAR files — but writing them is reserved. There is no free RAR encoder in existence. There is no open-source one. libarchive, which nearly every archive app on iOS is built on, reads RAR and cannot write it, and that is not an oversight anyone can patch.
So when an iPhone app offers to "create a RAR", one of these is happening: it is producing a ZIP and naming it .rar (which will fail the moment anyone tries to open it properly), or it is uploading your files to a server, or it is simply lying. There is no fourth possibility.
If you need to send someone a compressed archive, send a ZIP or a 7z. Both are open, both can be created on a phone, and both will be opened by the recipient's WinRAR without a murmur.
When a RAR will not open
In rough order of likelihood:
- It is RAR5 and your tool only does RAR4. See above. By far the most common cause.
- It is a multi-part archive and you only have one part. Files named
something.part1.rar,something.part2.rar, or the older.r00,.r01style, are pieces of one archive. You need every part, all downloaded completely, all sitting in the same folder. Part 1 alone is not a small archive — it is a fragment, and it cannot be extracted on its own. - It is password-protected. You need the password. Nobody can help you here; RAR encryption is AES-based and there is no back door. If you do not have the password, the contents are not coming out.
- The download is incomplete or corrupt. Check the file size against the source. A truncated archive fails in ways that look exactly like an unsupported format.
- It is not actually a RAR. Extensions lie. A file can be named .rar and be something else entirely.
An archive is a container, and it will hold anything. RAR files are not dangerous in themselves — but an archive is a wrapper, and a wrapper's contents are whatever the sender put in it. Extracting an archive from an untrusted source and running what comes out is exactly as risky as running anything else you were sent by a stranger. The format is not the threat; the payload is. On iOS this matters much less than on a desktop — an extracted .exe cannot do anything to your iPhone — but the file you then forward to a colleague on Windows is another matter.
What Convexy does with RAR
It extracts RAR archives on your device — both RAR4 and RAR5 — using a bundled build of libarchive. You can browse the contents before extracting, so you can see what is in an archive without committing to unpacking it.
It does not create RAR archives, because that is not a thing any software but WinRAR can do. For creating archives it offers ZIP, TAR, GZ, BZ2, TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2 and 7z.
Archive extraction and compression are free forever in Convexy — not part of the paid unlock, and they keep working after the trial ends.
How to do it
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Get the RAR into Files
Save it from Mail, Safari, Messages or wherever it arrived. Multi-part archives — part1.rar, part2.rar and so on — must all be downloaded, complete, and in the same folder.
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Open it in Convexy
Share the .rar into Convexy, or open Convexy and browse to it. It handles both RAR4 and RAR5, so an archive made in the last decade will open.
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Look inside before you extract
Convexy lists what is in the archive so you can see the contents first, rather than unpacking a hundred files to find out what they are.
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Extract
The archive is unpacked on your device. Nothing is uploaded, and it works in Airplane Mode. If the archive is password-protected you will be asked for the password — there is no way around one.
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Save the contents
Move the extracted files into Files, or share them onward. If you need to send an archive back, create a ZIP or a 7z — nothing can make a RAR.
Common questions
Can the iPhone Files app open RAR files?
No. iOS has built-in support for ZIP only — long-press a .zip and Uncompress appears. RAR is a proprietary format that Apple has never implemented, so a .rar in Files has no Uncompress option and cannot be previewed. You need an app with a RAR decoder built in.
Can I create a RAR file on an iPhone?
No, and neither can anything else except WinRAR itself. RAR's compression algorithm is proprietary and has never been licensed for third-party encoders — there is no free or open-source RAR encoder anywhere. Any app claiming to create RAR files on a phone is producing a ZIP with the wrong extension, uploading your files to a server, or lying. Send a ZIP or a 7z instead; WinRAR opens both.
What is the difference between RAR4 and RAR5?
They are different formats, not versions of one. RAR5 arrived with WinRAR 5 in 2013 and uses a different compression scheme, so a tool that only implements RAR4 cannot read a RAR5 archive — it will usually report the file as corrupt or unsupported. Most RAR files made in the last decade are RAR5.
Why does my RAR file say it is corrupt when it isn't?
Most often because it is a RAR5 archive and your tool only supports RAR4 — the error message is misleading. Other common causes: it is a multi-part archive and you are missing some parts, the download was truncated, or it is password-protected. Try a tool that explicitly supports RAR5 before assuming the file is broken.
How do I open a multi-part RAR (part1.rar, part2.rar) on iPhone?
Download every part, in full, into the same folder, then open the first part. The parts are pieces of a single archive, so part1 on its own cannot be extracted — it is a fragment, not a small archive. If any part is missing or incomplete, extraction fails.
Is it free to open RAR files in Convexy?
Yes. Archive extraction and compression are free forever — they are not part of the paid unlock and they keep working after the 14-day trial ends. Convexy extracts both RAR4 and RAR5 on-device, and can create ZIP, TAR, GZ, BZ2 and 7z archives.