Screenshots | PeaZip context menu, drag and drop extraction

Drag & Drop extraction

Drag files form application to system

By default, PeaZip fully integrate an improved implementation of native drag and drop on Windows platform, and also implements an optional custom drag and drop mechanism. Both options are fine tuned for the needs of archive management task, and provides security, stability, and speed improvements over standard system's drag and drop mechanism.

Options > Settings > General, "Use native drag and drop on Windows" switches the application between native and custom drag &drop mode.

Opening an archive file in PeaZip's file manager / archive browser allows to select content to be extracted through full-featured extraction GUI, or simply dragged to the system which results in direct extraction without further interaction requests.

Un-checking this option makes PeaZip use custom drag and drop implementation (optional, default off) which shows its own drag and drop information box about destination target and content being handled by the operation.

Fast Drag and Drop extraction from archives

PeaZip drag and drop implementation is specifically fine tuned for extraction of large contents from archives, and substantially improvs the security, stability, and on certain circumstances the speed, over the standard, geneal purpose system's drag&drop implementation.
Standard Windows drag and drop implementation (taken as reference) needs the selected content to be firstly decompressed to a temporary system's path, then moved to the intended destination directory, which needs twice the data being written if the intended destination is not on system's disk.
Instead, PeaZip directly extracts the dragged content to the target path, so under any circumstance data gets written only once, and only to intended destination.

PeaZip's fast drag and drop extraction implementationbrings multiple advantages over standard drag and drop

speed: extraction is nearly twice as fast when the destination directory is not on system's disk, i.e. extracting data to different partitions, removable disks or usb keys, network paths...
stability: if large amount of data is involved, standard drag and drop will fail if system disk has not enough free space, while PeaZip's fast drag and drop extraction only requires sufficient free disk space on the intended destination
security: if encryption is involved, no orphaned plain-text data could ever be left on system's temporary path, as the decompressed and decrypted data extracted from the encrypted archive is written only on the intended destination path

Default option "Use native native drag and drop on Windows" mechanism brings additional advantages over the purely custom approach:

ease of use: native drag&drop is consistent with standard behavior of system and other Windows applications, while custom drag and drop can target only desktop or open folders with address bar enabled (standard on all Windows systems)
unnecessary levels of nesting of extracted files and folders are automatically removed when using native drag&drop

Drag files from system to application

PeaZip free archiver utility also supports dragging files from system to application for archiving and extraction (if drag and drop source is detected being an archive file i.e. 7Z, RAR, ZIP...), and for plain drag&drop file copy.
Dragging files from filesystem to an open archive leads to archive update GUI for adding dropped files to the current archive on all supported platforms (Linux, macOS, Windows), if the archive format is write supported (i.e. add to existing zip, but not to ace which is a proprietary format supported only for decompression and test operations).

Two panes drag and drop extraction (in-app drag & drop)

PeaZip can extract items dragging from the file browser / archive browser area to the treeview / navigation side bar on the left of the application - which acts as a second pane in the scope of this operation.
This drag & drop mechanism works on all supported systems.
On drop action, the drag and drop context menu is displayed, allowing to select the desired function to perform on the dropped item(s): extract here, extract to smart / new folder (entire archives, or selected items from archive), or copy / move files (when browsing the filesystem).
This allows the internal drag and drop implementation to work like in a dual pane file manager

archive manager: drag & drop extract items directly to any path in bookmarks or history (navigation bar) or any path (tree view), and works even dropping to the minified compact side bar
file manager: copy and move items from the file browser to any aforementioned path visible in the treeview / navigation area, automatically jumping to browse the destination path.

Drag and drop operations supported by PeaZip on different systems

Following table recap drag and drop support from / to PeaZip on all supported operating systems:

Operating System	Drag and drop from system TO PeaZip Drag and drop within the app panes	Drag and drop FROM PeaZip to system
BSD	Fully supported	Not supported
Linux	Fully supported	Not supported
macOS	Fully supported	Not supported
Windows	Fully supported	Full support for native Windows drag and drop interface, can drop to system and to any application. Alternative custom drag and drop implementation able to drop to Windows file explorer only. In both cases drag & drop performances are optimized to best suit file extraction tasks.

Compression and extraction from context menu

Context menu Extract... and Add to archive entries brings to main extraction and compression screens respectively, allowing to fine tune the action with all supported options: select best compression format and level for the intended task, provide encryption password, split archive into multiple volumes, securely delete original files after operation, etc.
Extract here and Add to .7Z / Add to .ZIP simply starts immediate extraction or archive creation in the selected format, applying default options, without requiring further user's interaction after right click.

Add PeaZip to Windows context menu and SendTo menu

On Windows platform PeaZip installer automatically create customisable contextual menu conetxtual menu extraction and SendTo menu entries, for performing straightforward archive creation, extraction, format conversion, and test operations, with minimal or no interaction with main program's GUI, simply right clicking on target 7z, rar, tar, zip... archives.
Context menu entries (and file extensions associations) can be customized during installation or from Options > System integration, to select favourite compression, decompression, testing, encryption entries.

Add PeaZip to Windows 11 mini-context menu

On Windows 11 PeaZip can be integrated with W11 mini-context menu using .reg scripts in (peazip)/res/share/batch folder, and full context menu entries are available from "Show more" submenu..

Add PeaZip to context menu in Linux and BSD desktop environments

On Linux and BSD operating systems, FreeDesktop_integration folder in (peazip)/res/share/batch folder contains sample scripts and .desktop files for integrating the application in system's contextual menus in all Desktop Environments and file managers following FreeDesktop initiative's standards, such as Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Mate, Cinnamon...

PeaZip context menu integration using KDE Service menus in KDE right click menu

PeaZip context menu integration using Nautilus scripts in Gnome right click menu

PeaZip for Linux context menu entries using .desktop files in Open With menu (Mint, Cinnamon desktop)

add peazip in righ click menu
PeaZip on BSD (Mate desktop) context menu integration using .desktop files in Open With menu

Add PeaZip to macOS context menu

On macOS systems (peazip)/res/share/batch folder contains fully customisable sample Automator .workflow scripts to create service menus for main functions of PeaZip. A copy of those service menus is also available in the root of DMG installers, for ease of use.

PeaZip context menu entries on macOS

Right-click menu integration on different operating systems

Following table recap PeaZip support of context menu on different operating systems:

Operating System	Archirecture
Linux	In (peazip)/res/share/batch folder are provided sample .desktop files to integrate PeaZip with most common Linux DE such Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Mate, Cinnamon... following the FreeDestop standard
macOS	In (peazip)/res/share/batch folder are provided sample Automator .workflow scripts to integrate PeaZip with macOS context menu (linked in packages' root)
Windows	Installers provide automatic integration with SendTo and Windows context menu. Not supported integration with drag and drop's system context menu. In (peazip)/res/share/batch folder are provided sample SendTo menu links, and sample .reg scripts to add eaZip to Windows 11 mini-context menu.

All PeaZip screenshots, on this page as well as on the entire domain, are free for any use under Public Domain license, please feel free to use them.

HINT: click on a screenshot to view it full size in a new tab

Synopsis: Fast drag and drop extraction from archives with PeaZip custom drag&drop extract implementation, internal two pane -style drag and drop action. Context menu integration on Windows (and Windows 11 mini context menu), Linux, and macOS to compress, test and extract archives from system's context menu.

Topics: drag and drop extraction, context menu extraction and compression, extract here menu

PeaZip > Screenshots > Drag and drop extraction, context menu

RECOMMENDED PAGES

FREE RAR EXTRACTION UTILITY

CREATE SEPARATE ARCHIVES

EXTRACT ENCRYPTED ARCHIVES

REXTRACT FROM WINDOWS CONTEXT MENU

ADD PEAZIP TO MACOS SERVICE MENUS

LINUX CONTEXT MENU EXTRACTION