To activate this dialog select "Settings…" command in Options menu and click on "Paths" tab. The dialog contents are described below.
WinRAR uses this folder to create temporary files. If this field is blank, temporary files and folders will be created either in the current folder or in Windows temporary folder, depending on command type.
Initial state of this parameter is the standard Windows temporary folder. If you changed it and wish to revert it back to Windows temporary folder later, you can enter %temp% instead of folder name. WinRAR will expand it to Windows temporary folder name before creating temporary files.
For hard disks generally it is faster to create a temporary archive in the current folder, but for slow external disks it may be more efficient to create an archive on a hard disk and then copy it to external disk. To implement such behavior you should specify Folder for temporary files and turn on Use only for removable disks option.
Use only for removable disks option affects only those commands which involve archive modification. Other commands would not benefit from it, so they ignore the current disk type.
You may enter here a folder, which will be opened each time when WinRAR is started. This option has meaning only if Restore last working folder on start-up option is switched off, otherwise last opened folder will be set.
If this option is enabled, WinRAR will set last viewed folder, when executed without parameters.
If this field is not empty and an archive name does not contain a full path, an archive will be created in the specified folder. For example, if you entered the path to your Desktop, archives created by WinRAR will appear on the Desktop.
If this field is empty and an archive name does not contain a full path, archives will be created in the same folder as the files archived.
In the command line mode -cfg- switch disables most of WinRAR settings including the default folder for archives.
You may enter here a name of the folder, which will be used as a base to construct the destination folder in Extract without confirmation and Extract files to a specified folder commands. WinRAR builds the destination path in these extraction commands merging the default folder and an archive name. It may be convenient to enter Desktop path here, so you will immediately see unpacked data on your Desktop.
Unlike the default folder for archives, the default folder for extracted files is not used in the command line mode. Only "Extract files..." command is affected in context menus.
It controls if archive name is appended to the default folder or to folder proposed in extraction dialog, when constructing the destination path for extracted files.
This option works only in context menus, only for single selected archive with single folder and no files in archive root folder and only for "Extract to DestName\" command, where 'DestName' is a name of folder proposed by WinRAR and based on archive name. If all these conditions are met, this option removes the top level folder based on archive name from extraction path.
For example, if you have Pictures.rar containing all files in 'Samples' folder and if you unpack it with "Extract to Pictures\" context menu command, WinRAR will place files to "Pictures\Samples" if this option is off and to "Samples" if it is on. So it helps to save one click, avoiding necessity to open 'Pictures' folder, which contains nothing but 'Samples'.
This option introduces an additional delay in the beginning of extraction, because WinRAR needs to scan an archive and analyze its folder structure. Note that context menu still displays the archive based folder name even if it will be removed from path when extracting. Showing the correct folder already in context menu would introduce a potentially annoying delay between right clicking an archive and displaying the context menu.