File Roller – An Intro to Ubuntu Archive Manager

January 9, 2025

File Roller (formerly also called Archive Manager)
is the default archive manager program on Ubuntu. Its logo is a grey
box with a zipper. An archive manager is a computer program that helps
the user to extract and create archive or compressed archive files such
as ZIP, RAR, TAR.GZ, 7ZIP and so on. File Roller helps you doing all
that with good integration to Ubuntu desktop. Originally, File Roller is
a part of GNOME and had been adopted as default on Ubuntu thanks
to their strong and close relationship as Free/Libre Open Source
Software projects. To Ubuntu users, File Roller fills the same purpose
to WinZIP or WinRAR to Windows users. This article is part of our published compilation List of Ubuntu Default Applications and Their Purposes. We hope this helps everyone including you Ubuntu beginners. Now let’s start sharing Free Software together once again!

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Logo

Screenshots

Click to enlarge image.


(a)	(b)	(c)

(d)	(e)	(f)

Where:

(a) Default File Roller user interface. It says “No archive opened”.

(b) File Roller opening a tarball archive with xz compression (.tar.xz) file containing Ubuntu Documentation.

(d) Detailed view of (b). It shows the directory structure inside an archive file.

(e) Creating a ZIP compressed archive.

(f) Creating a ZIP archive, with additional options shown, and one among them, password.

Description

File Roller (formerly also called Archive Manager) is the archive manager of Ubuntu. The name File Roller matches the main purpose that is reducing size (rolling over, making something flat) of file. With File Roller, user can view the contents of an archive, extract files from it, and create new archives. It provides multiple archive format supports from external libraries. On Ubuntu, File Roller can both open and create most popular archives such as ZIP, ISO, TAR.GZ, TAR.XZ, and 7ZIP. It can also open RAR with limitation to create one because this format is proprietary (nonfree). For that reason, File Roller (along with the worldwide Free Software community) does not endorse nor encourage the use of RAR, rather it enables user to extract a RAR content and recreate the archive in other format such as ZIP or TAR.XZ.

Purposes

File Roller enables Ubuntu user to:

1. Extract archive files such as ZIP, TAR, RAR etc.

2. Create archive files and also edit existing ones.

3. Reduce size of file or folder by compressing.

4. Password protect file or folder.

5. Combine archive with compression such as TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2, TAR.XZ etc.

6. Make use of a lot of archive file formats such as 7ZIP, JAR, DEB, and still many more.

List of Supported Formats

File Roller supports these formats:

1. Archive only:
    AIX Small Indexed Archive (.ar)
    ISO-9660 CD Disc Image [Read-only mode] (.iso)
    Tape Archive File (.tar)

2. Archive and compression:
    Java Archive (.jar)
    WinRAR Compressed Archive (.rar) [Read-only mode]
    Cabinet File (.cab)
    ZIP Archived Comic Book (.cbz)
    ZIP Archive (.zip)
    ZOO Compressed Archive File (.zoo)

3. Tape Archive File compressed with:
    gzip (.tar.gz, .tgz)
    bzip (.tar.bz, .tbz)
    bzip2 (.tar.bz2, .tbz2)
    lzop (.tar.lzo, .tzo)
    7zip (.tar.7z)
    xz (.tar.xz)

Location on Screen

1. File Roller is available on Ubuntu applications menu.

2. File Roller window will show when you double-click an archive file. If you open one ZIP file for example, you are opening File Roller.

3. File Roller will also show when you right-click a folder as option called “Compress…”.

4. File Roller will also show when you right-click an archive file as two options called “Extract” and “Extract to“.

How To Run the Program

There are several ways to run File Roller. Pick one of these:

1. Open applications menu -> type File Roller -> click File Roller logo -> it runs.

2. Open Files -> right-click a file or folder -> Compress… -> it runs.

3. Open a ZIP or TAR.XZ archive -> it runs.

4. Click File Roller on the Dash (left panel) if any -> it runs.

Examples of Use

1. To create a ZIP: run Files -> right-click a file -> Compress… -> select ZIP -> OK.

2. To create a TAR.XZ: run Files -> right-click a file -> Compress… -> select TAR.XZ -> OK.

3. To open a RAR: run Files -> double-click a RAR -> Open With -> File Roller -> Open.

4. To extract a RAR: run Files -> double-click a RAR -> Select extract destination -> Extract.

5. To convert a RAR into a ZIP: combine example 3 and 1 above.

6. To convert a RAR into a TAR.XZ: combine example 3 and 2 above.

and many more! Please see Tutorials section.

User Documentation

File Roller comes with its own full documentation. You can read everything about it explained in an easy to understand way yet detailed and complete. Pick one of these to open it:

1. Run File Roller -> press F1.

2. Run File Roller -> click triple line button -> Help.

Tutorials on File Roller

We have published tutorials and articles about using File Roller you can read:

1. File Roller: Basic Archiving

2. File Roller: Archiving with Compression

3. File Roller: Archiving with Password Protection

Comparison to Counterparts on Other Systems

File
Roller is a default preinstalled program on Ubuntu. Thus, File Roller
is an alternative to WinZIP or WinRAR on Windows. However, in fact, both
of the latter are neither default nor preinstalled on Microsoft
systems. The distributors who sell preinstalled Windows computers are
responsible for both. File Roller is free software and licensed under
GNU General Public License. On the other hand, both counterparts are nonfree (proprietary) software.

Contributing to File Roller

File Roller is a Free/Libre and Open Source Software developed in public by a community of people. It is written in C with GTK framework and licensed under GNU GPL v2+ license.
Everyone is invited to join the development and that would be a great
contribution to the society in general, The GNOME Project and the Ubuntu
community in particular. You can join the project to better improve and
advance File Roller by helping writing code, drawing artworks,
translating languages, testing bugs and fixing them, and many more
including educating people to use Free Software like it. Visit their
official website File Roller GitLab.