It may be more than 15 years old, but 7-Zip is an open source classic, still used as the archiving engine for a host of applications.

7-Zip’s interface isn’t a strong point, though, and if you’d like something simpler then you might prefer the Java-based J7Z.

The program is an ultra-lightweight 240KB download. It requires installation, but caused no issues for us, and won’t interfere with an existing 7-Zip installation.

Select and right-click one or more files, choose “J7Z”, and the usual lengthy 7-Zip list of options is replaced by just two: “Create” and “Extract”.

Choosing “Extract” displays a number of extraction profiles, and all you have to do is select the one you need. “Beneath” extracts your archives to a folder beneath the current one; “Desktop” sends them to the desktop, “Documents” the Documents folder, “Temporary”… You get the idea.

The program creates or extracts archives based on the rules in a custom profile

J7Z’s “Create” menu takes a similar approach, with a selection of archiving destinations to choose from: “Default” (the current folder), “Local”, “Remote” and so on.

These profiles probably won’t be right for you (the Create options mostly have hard-coded drive names), but there are a couple of ways around that.

Both the Create and Extract menus have a Custom option which launches the J7Z interface. This doesn’t have nearly as many options as 7-Zip, but you can still set your compression algorithm (7-Zip, XZ, BZip2, GZip, Tar, Rar, add password protection, set source or destination folders, use custom, 7-Zip command line switches, and more. Select what you need, click Create or Extract and watch as J7 processes your files.

More usefully, you can also use the J7Z interface to open and edit the default Create/ Extract profiles, or build some new ones of your own, customising the program’s settings to suit your needs.

Is this worth the effort? If mostly you just run basic extractions (right-click > 7-Zip > Extract To), then probably not. But if you’re regularly delving deeper into 7-Zip’s menus or dialogs to perform custom tasks, J7Z’s simplified profile-based approach just might save you time.