Windows 11 Build 27818 is now rolling out to the testers in the Canary channel, and it has one noteworthy change (and my personal favourite) – faster unzipping of files in File Explorer. Previously, File Explorer could take longer than usual to unzip files, but that’s no longer the case.

I tried Windows 11 Build 27818 on one of my devices and I didn’t notice any significant improvements when I extracted a zip file with a dozen of ISO files, but the performance was approx 5-10% faster when I tried to unzip a .zip file with thousands of files.

As Microsoft noted in a blog post noticed by Windows Latest, File Explorer’s unzipping has been improved only when you have too many files. It doesn’t make File Explorer faster, but the change is closely tied to how the app tries to unzip/extract your files, especially the zip files with a lot of files and folders.

Microsoft hasn’t mentioned what changed, but it seems to be related to the API that handles unzipping via File Explorer.

“Did some more work to improve the performance of extracting zipped files in File Explorer, particularly where you’re unzipping a large number of small files,” Microsoft noted in a blog post.

Note: This change has nothing to do with third-party apps like WinRAR, 7Zip and more.

It’s not the first time Microsoft has tried to improve File Explorer’s zipping performance because we noticed similar changes last year, but that time, it was limited to ‘zipping’ and today’s change is all about ‘unzipping’.

Zipping or archiving is when you turn your files or folders into a zip, while unzipping is the reverse process.

But is that all we need for File Explorer? I don’t think so. File Explorer needs to be TRULY FIXED.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying File Explorer is trash and I do appreciate these zip related improvements, but Microsoft really needs to do something about the Explorer’s performance.

File Explorer is slow, especially in the top region, which takes a couple of seconds to load. It’s still not fixed in Windows 11 24H2, and we’re not seeing any improvements related to that area in newer builds. Worse, Microsoft doesn’t even want to acknowledge that File Explorer is slow on some PCs.

In addition, Windows 11 24H2 has a bug that causes the menu to appear outside the screen. I am talking about the three dots “options” menu, which now appears outside the screen when you maximize the File Explorer window. This issue is now patched in newer preview builds, and it should ship to everyone in April 2025.

Let me know your thoughts around File Explorer in the comments below.

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