To activate this dialog in WinRAR select "Settings…" command in Options menu and click on "Integration" tab. The same set of options also is available when installing WinRAR, so it is possible to change the described below options both during installation and later, in WinRAR settings.
Associate WinRAR as default viewer for selected formats. It is reasonable to leave these options selected, so you can open archives in WinRAR by double clicking on archive name or icon in Explorer or Desktop. "Toggle all" button selects all formats at once or deselects them if all they are already selected.
Beginning from Windows 10, Windows treats these association options as recommendation only. Generally they are applied in case no other user application is associated with a file type. Otherwise they are utilized to build "Open with" list with multiple entries. So it may be necessary to resort to Windows own settings to change an already existing file association, such as "Choose another app" with "Always use this app to open files" option in "Open with" Explorer menu or "Choose default apps by file type" in Windows settings.
Here you can specify additional file name extensions for archive formats supported by WinRAR. For example, if you have files with ".dat" extension, which are in RAR format, you can enter "dat" in this field to associate WinRAR with such files and add extraction commands to context menus displayed for "dat" files in Windows shell. If you need to enter several extensions, separate them by spaces.
This option is available only in WinRAR settings, but not in WinRAR installer.
Add WinRAR icon to the Desktop.
Add WinRAR icon to the Start Menu.
This option adds WinRAR icon to programs list in Windows Start Menu.
This option adds WinRAR program group to programs list in Windows Start Menu.
Allows the use of context menus and drag and drop for handling WinRAR archives.
Place all items added by WinRAR to file and archive context menus into submenu.
Beginning from Windows 11, an application can add only a single top level command or submenu to Explorer context menu. If "Cascaded context menus" is on, this single item is a submenu storing all necessary WinRAR commands. If this option is off, only one extraction command for archives and one archiving command for usual files are available. You can select these commands with "Context menu items..." button.
Add small icons to items added by WinRAR to file and archive context menus.
Enable this option in Windows 11 if WinRAR commands are missing in "Show more options" Windows legacy context menu or in context menus of third party file managers. If WinRAR commands are already present here, enabling this option can duplicate them. This option is not available in Windows 10 and older.
Choose items to display in Explorer context menus.