How to open any file, and download the program safely

Search “download VLC” and the first results are ads and mirrors that repackage the installer. file.wiki publishes the download URL the publisher actually declares, the SHA-256 hash of every installer, and the command to check it yourself.

Built from Microsoft's winget-pkgs manifests and the Homebrew cask index. We host nothing, and every page links back to the manifest it was built from.

Open a file type Fix a missing DLL Installation error Check a hash

Every page gives you this7-Zip 26.02

Official URL: https://github.com/ip7z/7zip/releases/download/26.02/7z2602-x64.exe
Served by: github.com — a recognised distribution platform
SHA-256: 6745fa76dc2ea031596d8678f6f6b99c3c1b435b4164a63485adbbc7b8d82ef0

Check the file you downloaded

Get-FileHash "7z2602-x64.exe" -Algorithm SHA256

221
programs indexed: 10,435
SHA-256 hashes: 88
format guides: 70
DLL errors mapped: 27
install error codes

How to open a file

All 1490 extensions

Full guides for the formats that actually stop people, with the step-by-step for Windows and macOS and the specific reason each one refuses to open.

A program says a DLL is missing

All 70

Search the file name and the results are sites offering that single DLL, which is both unsafe and, in most cases, not even the fix. Each of these maps to the runtime that actually contains it.

An installer failed with a code

All 27

What each code actually means, with the fixes ordered by how often each one turns out to be the answer.

What we flagged

3 of 221

Most of these installers check out. These are the ones where something in the manifest does not, with the specific reason attached.

Tools built on the same data

The index is not only a list of downloads. The manifests carry things nobody publishes in a readable form, so we do.

Also in the index

All 221 programs