Whether you prefer command-line tools or graphical file archivers, the extraction process is pretty simple. To understand what a Tar GZ File is, you first need to understand what a TAR file is. Short for Tape Archive, a TAR file is used to store multiple files in one to send over the internet or for archiving purposes. Similarly, the TAR GZ file extension is created when compressing archived TAR files with the GNU zip utility. It’s easy to get confused when navigating between .tar, .tar.gz, and .gz – not to mention zipping and unzipping them. Here are a few frequently asked questions we commonly hear from users working with .tar.gz files.
- Unlike Windows’ convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for unzipping .zip files, you’ll need to use the tar utility through the command line.
- While there are many tools to choose from, the most popular include 7-Zip and WinZip.
- But it does not compress the data, which results in a larger file size compared to compressed formats.
- From videos to entire software packages, many files are compressed and stored using the .tar.gz format.
- Let’s explore the extraction process for both Linux & Windows platforms.
You can use the -C option to extract to a different directory (in this case, /home/user/files). For sending and storing, both .zip and .tar.gz files will allow you to send relatively large packages as a single file. However, there are some pretty major differences when it comes to accessing data within the files and the compression efficiency. On the other hand, Windows users can rely on third-party file archiver tools like 7-zip or WinRAR to effortlessly extract files. A Tar file is an archive that consists of multiple files put into one, while GZ is a compressed file format.
What is a TAR GZ file extension?
In other words, .zip is a collection of compressed files, while .tar.gz is a compressed collection of files. WinRAR is a popular file compression & archive utility software. While every tar.gz file is a .tar archive, not every .gz is a .tar file. The .gz extension represents the gzip compression format, which can best bitcoin exchanges of 2021 be applied to almost any file format to compress data and save space. Mac’s native archive utility supports the file format as well, which means you can just double-click on the tar.gz file in question to extract it. A .tar.gz file, also known as a tarball, is a compressed archive used in UNIX and Linux systems.
Extract .tar.gz File in Windows Using WinZip
Unlike Windows’ convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for unzipping .zip files, you’ll need to use the tar utility through the command line. However, there are also many third-party tools you can install for a more user-friendly experience. This error usually occurs when a .tar has been saved as a .gz despite having never been compressed using the gzip utility. It may sound like a silly mistake, but it’s surprisingly common in situations where users directly rename files and their extensions (such as .tar and .gz) in the process. You can create your own compressed .tar files using compression utilities such as gzip. Gzip is one of the most popular and available options, especially since it comes built in to most Linux distributions and macOS.
Once you choose the directory, click the Select button in the top right corner. Uncover your website’s performance bottlenecks to deliver a better user experience. Get started with a free trial of our Application Hosting or Database Hosting. This is not just about how to turn on and off sticky keys but a wholesome guide to using them for making a few things simple on a Windows PC. Are you facing the issue of low memory error on your system while performing basic tasks on your Windows PC? Here we list out several possible solutions for fixing this error.
Thus, combining TAR and GZ into a TAR.GZ provides you with a compressed archive. Mac users can also use this command to extract their tar.gz files, though they also have access to a GUI-based method we will discuss in the next section. Since Windows doesn’t natively support tar.gz files, you need a third-party tool to open them for you.
Where commands have little (if any) room for typos or omissions, many common errors are the result of small mistakes, misspellings, or incorrect formats. Thankfully, unless you’re somehow missing your tar or gzip utility, most common errors are very easy to fix. Of course, that’s not to say .tar files are some kind of “lesser” format than .zip. Rather, they both accomplish the same task (file compression) in the same way. The extraction method is precisely the same for tar files that have compression, such as.tar.gz,.tar.bz2, and others. In short, a TAR file creates one archive file out of multiple files without compressing them, while the GZ file format compresses a file without creating an archive.
How to List Contents of .tar.gz File in Linux
This format can be sent by email or social media platforms that support the Tar GZ file format. A file using .tar.gz format is a file that has been created using the Unix-based archival application tar and then compressed using the gzip compression. These files are often referred to as “tarballs.” While you benefits of white label crypto exchange software development can find them with a double extension (.tar.gz), the extension can also be shortened to .tgz or .gz. This command will extract (-x) the file (-f) specified (in this case, filename.tar.gz) to the current directory. Note that this command also works with other common compression formats such as .tar.bz2.
Alternatively, select one of the offered locations or set one up by clicking the Extract files… option. Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 14 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 20 years of combined experience in technology.
A GUI is more suitable for beginners than a command-line tool. Knowing how to unzip a .tar.gz file allows users to extract and access the archives’ contents efficiently. It’s often is cryptocurrency property useful to list the contents of a .tar.gz file without having to unzip the entire archive. Again, the above commands will extract to the current working directory by default.
You also need to be in the directory containing the tar.gz file, like with most terminal commands in Linux. For a more GUI-friendly approach to extracting .tar.gz files, use 7-Zip. The command extracts files to a new directory called example1, which is located in the current directory.
This simplifies file management and reduces the risk of data loss during transfers.
Combined into the tar GZ file extension, you can archive and compress multiple files into one. To open such a package, you need to decompress the gzip and extract the resulting tarball. Some utilities can open TGZ files in one step, others in two. A user-friendly way to extract files from a .tar.gz archive is via a Graphical User Interface (GUI).
Most file extraction applications like 7-Zip or WinZip will get the job done. This guide will teach you the steps to use native tar commands on Windows 10 from Command Prompt and Ubuntu to extract the content of a .tar.gz file. You can open most .tar.gz files using the tar command built in to Linux, macOS, and Windows 10. If you’re not comfortable with the terminal or command line, third-party tools such as 7-Zip offer a more user-friendly alternative. In this example, the user tried to extract the file titled “FILE” from filename.tar.gz.
Though gzip is the most common compression utility, it’s not the only one. As you might imagine, using a different compression utility on a .tar file will result in a different double extension. Some common examples include .tar.bz2 (bzip2), .tar.br (Brotli), and .tar.zst (zstd), among many others.
The tar command also provides support for extracting only specific files or directories from a .tar.gz file. Simply add a space-separated list of the files you want to extract. A “.tar” file is a collection of files compressed into a single file or archive. Short for “Tape ARchive,” the name “TAR” is a throwback to when files were stored on magnetic tape drives.