Compressing something without installing anything

ezyZip is an archiving tool that runs inside a browser tab, and the vendor says it has been serving since 2009. What separates it from the ordinary online converter is where the work happens. Files are not uploaded to a server: packing and unpacking take place locally in the browser, so there is no size or traffic ceiling on the service and the privacy question is simpler to answer. You open the page, choose the files, and that is the whole setup; there is no registration and no limit on how often it may be used.

That distinction is not cosmetic. A conventional site of this kind has to receive the archive before it can touch it, which means an upload, a wait, and a copy of your material on someone else's disk. Doing the work in the tab removes all three, and it also removes the reason most people avoid these sites for anything they care about.

What it can pack

Creating an archive covers ZIP, 7Z, TAR and the GZ-compressed form of TAR, and reaches Unix formats such as CPIO and PAX. It can also produce ISO disc images, game archives in the PAK, VPK, FPX and BMZ styles, encrypted archives with a password, self-extracting packages and split archives. Beyond packing files together it offers separate entries for shrinking a single image, video or audio file, which is a different job from archiving and useful to have in the same place.

What it can open

Extraction is the widest part of the service: the vendor says it handles more than 250 archive formats, including password-protected and split ones. Beyond the familiar ZIP, ZIPX, RAR, 7Z and TAR, it opens optical and system images such as ISO, BIN, DMG and WIM, virtual machine disks in the VMDK, VDI, VHD and QCOW2 shapes, install packages for Android and iOS in APK, IPA and IPSW form, and game resource packs. Contents can be browsed before anything is extracted, and an audio track can be pulled straight out of a video.

Conversion and the smaller tools

Conversion covers more than 200 pairs of formats. Moving between archives is the common case, RAR to ZIP or 7Z to ZIP, and images and virtual disks can be converted into each other as well, with images, audio, video and documents in the list too. Around that sit a handful of tools that are easy to reach for: repairing a damaged ZIP, RAR or 7Z archive, merging several archives into one, creating a split archive, and sending a file directly to another person peer to peer. A desktop version exists as well, which the vendor presents as free of advertising and able to handle larger files.

Why the list of formats is the real feature

The formats fall into families, and each family exists for a different reason. Plain archives hold files: ZIP and 7Z are the everyday ones, while TAR with its GZ-compressed form and the Unix pair CPIO and PAX come from another tradition altogether. Disc images such as ISO keep the layout of a physical disc, system images such as BIN, DMG and WIM do the same job for installations, and virtual disks in the VMDK, VDI, VHD and QCOW2 shapes are what a virtual machine boots from. Mobile packages in APK, IPA and IPSW form are how software reaches a phone or a tablet, and game archives in the PAK, VPK, FPX and BMZ styles hold the resources a game loads at run time.

Having all of them behind one page is the practical part. Looking inside a virtual disk, or taking one file out of a game pack, otherwise means finding a specialist utility for that single family, using it once and forgetting about it until the next time. The same argument covers the repair and merge tools: they are small functions that are awkward to live without and silly to install four separate programs for.

When you need to open a RAR once, look inside an ISO, or turn a pile of files into a ZIP to send onward, ezyZip is the low-effort answer: nothing to install, nothing to sign up for, and the files never leave your machine. For archiving that happens often and at volume, a local tool remains the steadier choice.