TBZ2 to Z Converter
FileFlip converts TBZ2 to Z 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 TBZ2 file to Z?#
- Drop your TBZ2 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 Z 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 Z file. Your browser writes it straight to your downloads folder, because there was never a server holding it.
Does converting TBZ2 to Z lose quality?#
No. Converting TBZ2 to Z 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 TBZ2 files online?#
Yes, because nothing is uploaded. FileFlip converts TBZ2 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 TBZ2 to Z actually does to the file#
Converting TBZ2 to Z 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: TBZ2 → the unpacked files → Z |
| 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 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.
What is a Z file?#
A Z file is a single stream compressed with the LZW algorithm by the Unix compress utility, the format gzip was written specifically to replace once a patent on LZW made distributing compress a legal risk.
There's essentially no reason to create a new Z file today; gzip replaced it decades ago with better compression and no patent risk.
Convert an old Z file to GZ or XZ so modern tools that dropped compress support can actually open it.
TBZ2 to Z questions people ask#
What's the difference between .tar.bz2 and .tbz2?
Nothing; TBZ2 is a tar archive compressed with bzip2, identical in content to a file named .tar.bz2, with tbz2 just the shortened single-extension spelling.
Is a TBZ2 smaller than a TGZ of the same files?
Usually yes. bzip2 typically compresses tighter than gzip, so a TBZ2 archive of the same directory is often smaller than the equivalent TGZ, at the cost of taking longer to create.
Why would I pick TBZ2 over TXZ?
TBZ2 compresses faster than TXZ for a similar amount of size reduction, since bzip2's block-based compression is lighter on CPU than xz's LZMA2. If squeezing out the smallest possible file matters more than compression time, TXZ usually wins instead.
Is a .Z file the same as gzip?
No. A .Z file is compressed with the older Unix compress utility's LZW algorithm, not gzip's DEFLATE, and the two aren't interchangeable; a tool built to read .gz files can't decompress a .Z file.