In the cluttered toolbox of a Windows system administrator or a game modder, few utilities balance speed and simplicity as elegantly as LZ4. The version v1.8.3 (often labeled "v183" in shorthand) for Win64 represents a quiet milestone — a snapshot of compression technology from late 2018 that remains astonishingly relevant today.
To compress multiple files (e.g., file1.txt, file2.txt, and file3.txt) and save the compressed output to separate files: lz4 v183 win64
lz4 file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
This will generate file1.txt.lz4, file2.txt.lz4, and file3.txt.lz4 files. In the cluttered toolbox of a Windows system
Because LZ4 is open-source, you have legitimate options. Never download executables from suspicious forums – malware authors love to package popular compression tools. This will generate file1
If you obtain an lz4.exe claiming to be v1.8.3 win64, verify with:
certutil -hashfile lz4.exe SHA256
Expected hash (if built from official source with default MSVC 2017 x64) should match community-known values. For v1.8.3, a known good build (by "Cyan4973" – Yann Collet's official) yields:
SHA256: 5c8f6c6b8e4b8c6f4e5d1b2c3a4b5c6d7e8f9a0b1c2d3e4f5a6b7c8d9e0f1a2 (example)
Always compute your own from a trusted source.