TGZ to TBZ2 Converter
FileFlip converts TGZ 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 TGZ file to TBZ2?#
- 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 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 TGZ to TBZ2 lose quality?#
No. Converting TGZ 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 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 TBZ2 actually does to the file#
Converting TGZ 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: TGZ → 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 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 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.
TGZ to TBZ2 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.
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.