TGZ to TAR Converter
FileFlip converts TGZ to TAR 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 TGZ file to TAR?#
- Drop your TGZ 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 TAR 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 TAR file. Your browser writes it straight to your downloads folder, because there was never a server holding it.
Does converting TGZ to TAR lose quality?#
No. Converting TGZ to TAR 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 TGZ files online?#
Yes, because nothing is uploaded. FileFlip converts TGZ 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 TGZ to TAR actually does to the file#
Converting TGZ to TAR 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, and drops file timestamps and file permissions.
| Engine | libarchive |
|---|---|
| Conversion path | 2 steps: TGZ → the unpacked files → TAR |
| 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 | On the page's own thread, so a very large file will make the tab wait |
What survives the conversion
| What is in the file | This conversion | Why |
|---|---|---|
| File contents | Kept | Carried through into the converted file. |
| File timestamps | Dropped | The target format has nowhere to put it. |
| File permissions | Dropped | The target format has nowhere to put it. |
Worth knowing before you start:
- the built-in ZIP and TAR writer records no timestamps, permissions, or ownership
- every entry is extracted into memory before anything is written, so a very large archive can exhaust it
- this conversion runs on the page's own thread, so a large file will freeze the tab while it works
What is a TGZ file?#
A TGZ file is the result of running tar to bundle files first and then gzip to compress that single resulting stream, packaged under one extension because DOS-era 8.3 filenames had no room for the two dots in .tar.gz.
Use TGZ for a Unix-style package or source release, where tar's metadata plus gzip's speed is the traditional, most widely supported combination.
Convert TGZ to TXZ when the smallest possible archive size matters more than compression speed.
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.
TGZ to TAR questions people ask#
What's the difference between .tar.gz and .tgz?
Nothing; a TGZ file is a tar archive compressed with gzip, exactly the same content as a .tar.gz file. The .tgz spelling exists because older filesystems, notably DOS's 8.3 naming, couldn't handle a filename with two dots and a three-letter extension after each.
Can I open a specific file inside a TGZ without extracting everything?
Most tar tools can list or pull one named file from a TGZ, but they still have to decompress the gzip stream sequentially up to that point first, since there's no index. On a large archive this is slower than the same operation on a ZIP, where each file is compressed independently.
Why do open-source projects distribute source code as .tgz?
A TGZ keeps Unix file permissions and directory structure intact through tar while gzip compresses the whole thing down quickly, and gzip decompresses on essentially any system without extra tooling. That combination has been the default source-release format since long before xz or bzip2 existed.
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.