9to5Google reports that the Chrome OS Files app will begin supporting additional archive file formats with a new update, scheduled for release in October. While the lack of support hasn’t prevented users from being able to open specific files (other apps can do the job), opening most archived files with a single app would be more convenient. According to a post on Chromium Gerrit, the added formats include 7z, bz2, crx, gz, iso, tar, tbz, and tbz2. As 9to5Google points out, there’s some interesting potential in some of these file formats, as they each serve a different purpose. For example, .crx files are used to archive official Chrome extensions, while .iso files have been used to archive operating systems. Tape Archive (.tar) files are commonly used to combine multiple files into one for Linux and Unix systems. BZIP2 Compressed (.bz2) files are typically used to compress file containers that normally can’t be compressed, and are usually only used with Unix-based systems. BZIP Compressed Tar Archive (.tbz and .tbz2) files are a combination of the .tar and .bz2 format that use BZIP2 to compress archived TAR files. A developer comment on Chromium Gerrit states, “This feature flag will be introduced in M93, false by default. ‘True by default’ is scheduled for M94.” This means that the update will be available for testing in Chrome OS 93, which is slated to release in September. Users will have to manually activate the feature in order to try it out, otherwise, they can wait for Chrome OS 94 to release in October, when the feature will be on by default.
