Just right-click the ISO, point to the “7-Zip” menu, and then choose one of the extraction commands. If you prefer, you can also extract the full contents of the ISO to a normal folder. You can copy anything from the ISO to a regular folder just by dragging and dropping.

Depending on the size of the ISO, this can take up to a minute, so be patient. So, all you have to do is double-click an ISO image to open it up and browse its contents.

When you install 7-Zip, it associates the. We like 7-Zip around here because it’s free, open-source, and plenty powerful. For this, you’ll need a third-party app like WinRAR or 7-Zip. If you don’t want to mount an ISO or burn it disc, but still need to access to the files inside, you can extract the contents to your PC. Select the image file in Finder, and then head to File > Burn Disk Image ( Name) to Disc. RELATED: How To Burn an ISO Image In Windows 7 We’ll talk about that a bit more in the next section. Also, if you have a compression app (like 7-Zip) installed, and it’s associated with the ISO file extension, you also won’t see the command.

Note: If you don’t have an optical disc writer on your PC, you won’t see the command. People can then decide whether they want to mount that image or use it to burn an optical disc. While many people do use ISO images for creating backups of their optical disc, ISO images these days are used primarily for distributing large programs and operating systems, because it allows all the files to be contained in one easily downloadable file. Most operating systems (and many utilities) also allow you to mount an ISO image as a virtual disc, in which case all your apps treat it as if a real optical disc were inserted. The idea behind ISO images is that you can archive an exact digital copy of a disc, and then later use that image to burn a new disc that’s in turn an exact copy of the original. They are a sector-by-sector copy of the disc, and no compression is used. You can think of an ISO image as a complete copy of everything stored on a physical optical disc like CD, DVD, or Blu-ray disc-including the file system itself. The name ISO was taken from the name of the file system used by optical media, which is usually ISO 9660.

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