TAR to TBZ2 Converter
FileFlip converts TAR to TBZ2 entirely inside your browser, using libarchive compiled to WebAssembly. The file is never uploaded to a server: it is read off your disk, converted on your own machine, and saved back by the browser. That means no file-size limit, no queue and no account.
How do I convert a TAR file to TBZ2?#
- Drop your TAR file onto the converter at the top of this page, or click it to pick one from your computer. You can add as many as you like.
- Leave the target set to TBZ2 and the conversion starts on its own. FileFlip downloads 1.0 MB of WebAssembly the first time and nothing after that, then runs libarchive on your own machine.
- Save the TBZ2 file. Your browser writes it straight to your downloads folder, because there was never a server holding it.
Does converting TAR to TBZ2 lose quality?#
No. Converting TAR to TBZ2 does not touch the files inside the archive. Each member is read out and written back byte for byte, so only the wrapper around them changes and nothing is recompressed.
Is it safe to convert TAR files online?#
Yes, because nothing is uploaded. FileFlip converts TAR files inside the browser tab you already have open, using WebAssembly builds of the same engines a desktop converter would install. Your file is read from your own disk into the page's memory, and no request carrying it is ever made.
You do not have to take that on trust. Open your browser's network panel, run a conversion, and you will see the engine come down and your file go nowhere. There is no upload, no server-side copy, no retention window, and no account tied to what you converted.
How FileFlip works lists every engine, its version and its download size, and shows how to check for yourself that nothing leaves your machine.
What TAR to TBZ2 actually does to the file#
Converting TAR to TBZ2 runs on libarchive, downloads 1.0 MB of WebAssembly the first time and nothing after that, copies the archived files through unchanged, keeps file contents.
| Engine | libarchive |
|---|---|
| Conversion path | 2 steps: TAR → the unpacked files → TBZ2 |
| Downloaded to your browser | 1.0 MB, once, then cached by your browser |
| Quality | Lossless, contents copied unchanged |
| You get back | One file |
| Where it runs | In a background worker, so the page stays responsive |
What survives the conversion
| What is in the file | This conversion | Why |
|---|---|---|
| File contents | Kept | Carried through into the converted file. |
| File timestamps | Sometimes | Survives for some files and not others. |
| File permissions | Sometimes | Survives for some files and not others. |
Worth knowing before you start:
- the output is a PAX tar archive inside the compressor, not a single compressed stream
- every entry is extracted into memory before anything is written, so a very large archive can exhaust it
What is a TAR file?#
A TAR file concatenates files, directories and 512-byte headers recording each item's owner, permissions and modification time into one stream, a format Unix introduced in 1979 for writing straight to magnetic tape with no compression involved.
Use TAR when file ownership, permissions and symlinks have to survive the trip, which matters for backups and Unix software distribution and doesn't matter for a folder of photos.
Convert an uncompressed TAR to a compressed variant like TGZ or TXZ when the archive is being stored or transferred and its size actually matters.
What is a TBZ2 file?#
A TBZ2 file is a TAR archive compressed as one continuous bzip2 stream under a single extension, so unlike ZIP, extracting one file means decompressing everything that comes before it in the archive.
Use TBZ2 when a tarball needs to be smaller than TGZ makes it and the slower compression time is acceptable.
Convert TBZ2 to TXZ for a smaller result still, or to TGZ when speed matters more than size.
TAR to TBZ2 questions people ask#
Why does TAR need a compressor like gzip?
TAR only concatenates files and their metadata into one stream; it was designed in 1979 to write straight to magnetic tape and never included compression at all. That's why a tarball is normally paired with gzip, bzip2 or xz, producing .tar.gz, .tar.bz2 or .tar.xz.
Why is a TAR file about the same size as the files inside it?
A TAR archive stores file data unmodified, padded out to 512-byte blocks, so it only adds a small amount of header overhead per file rather than shrinking anything. Compressing it separately with gzip or xz is what actually reduces the size.
Can I extract one file from a large TAR archive?
Yes, tar can extract a single named file, but it reads sequentially through the archive until it reaches that entry, since TAR has no index like ZIP's central directory. On an uncompressed tarball this is fast; on a compressed .tar.gz it means decompressing everything up to that point too.
Does TAR preserve file permissions?
Yes, that's one of TAR's defining features: each entry's header records the owner, group, permission bits and modification time, which is why Unix backup tools and package formats still build on it. Most non-Unix archive formats, including the base 7z format, don't keep this information.