File Operations

GZ/TAR.GZ Extractor

Extract .gz, .tar.gz, .tgz, and .tar files entirely in your browser. Handy for opening FTP backups (tar.gz) or log files (.gz) from a rental server. Files are never sent to a server.

Tips for Extracting GZ/TAR.GZ Files

  • .gz compresses a single file only. .tar.gz (the same as .tgz) is a tar archive — multiple files and folders bundled together with tar and then compressed with gzip — and it's commonly used for FTP backups from rental servers. This tool automatically detects which format you have, so you can just drop the file without worrying about the extension.
  • If the contents turn out to be a single file (e.g. access.log.gz), a download button appears right away. If there are multiple files (tar format), you'll see a file listing just like the ZIP Extractor tool, with individual downloads and batch extraction.
  • In Chrome or Edge, choosing a folder with "Extract All" writes everything out directly while preserving the original folder structure. In other browsers, files are downloaded individually and the folder structure cannot be preserved.
  • Special entries such as symbolic links appear in the list, but since they don't carry actual file data, they can't be downloaded (this is a Linux-specific entry type, so it almost never shows up in ZIP files created on Windows).

Frequently Asked Questions

No. Extraction happens entirely inside your browser, and the file's contents are never sent to a server.

They're identical in content. .tgz is a holdover from older operating systems that required filenames of 8 characters or fewer — it's simply a shorter alias for .tar.gz. Both can be extracted with this tool exactly the same way.

The gzip and tar formats don't have any password-protection mechanism like ZIP does, so this situation normally doesn't come up. If you're being asked for a password, the file may actually be in a different format, such as ZIP. In that case, try our sister tool, the ZIP Extractor.

This tool does not look at the extension at all — it examines the file's contents (the first few bytes) to automatically determine whether it is gzip or tar. Even if the extension is missing or different, it can be extracted as long as the actual data is in gzip or tar format.

Yes, but since everything is processed in the browser's memory, files over a few gigabytes may run slowly or fail depending on your device.
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Side Note — Why Compressing and Bundling Are Separate Tools

ZIP, familiar from Windows, combines "bundling multiple files together" and "compressing them" into a single format. In the Linux/Unix world, though, there is a long-standing design philosophy — the Unix philosophy — of combining small tools that each do one thing well. That's why tar (which only bundles files, without compressing them) and gzip (which only compresses, without being able to bundle multiple files) developed as separate commands.

That's why taking a backup on a Linux server is a two-step process: first bundle everything into a single file with tar -cf backup.tar folder/, then compress it with gzip backup.tar — resulting in a file with the double extension .tar.gz. The name "tar" itself comes from its original purpose: writing backups out to a magnetic tape drive (Tape ARchive).

This is why so many people are puzzled to find that extracting a .gz file just leaves them with another .tar file inside. This tool automatically handles both the gzip decompression and the tar content listing, so you never have to think about the two-step process yourself.

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