TXZ to LZ Converter
FileFlip converts TXZ to LZ 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 TXZ file to LZ?#
- Drop your TXZ 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 LZ 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 LZ file. Your browser writes it straight to your downloads folder, because there was never a server holding it.
Does converting TXZ to LZ lose quality?#
No. Converting TXZ to LZ 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 TXZ files online?#
Yes, because nothing is uploaded. FileFlip converts TXZ 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 TXZ to LZ actually does to the file#
Converting TXZ to LZ 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: TXZ → the unpacked files → LZ |
| 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 TXZ file?#
A TXZ file is a TAR archive compressed as one xz stream under a single extension, combining tar's metadata-preserving bundling with the strongest general-purpose compression ratio of the tar pairings offered here.
Use TXZ for a source release or package where the smallest possible download size is worth slower compression.
Convert TXZ to TGZ when a tool in the chain only understands gzip, still the most universally supported tar compressor.
What is an LZ file?#
An LZ file is a single stream of data compressed with lzip, an LZMA-based command-line compressor that Antonio Diaz Diaz released in 2008 as a long-term-archival alternative to gzip, bzip2 and xz.
Pick lzip when an archive needs to survive years of storage or transmission and the ability to partially recover a damaged file matters more than having a GUI tool handle it.
Convert an LZ file to gzip or zip when it needs to open on a system whose tools stop at the common formats, which is most of them.
TXZ to LZ questions people ask#
Is TXZ smaller than TGZ or TBZ2?
Usually yes. xz's LZMA2 compression typically beats both gzip and bzip2 on the same data, so a TXZ archive is usually the smallest of the three tar-plus-compressor combinations, though it also takes the longest to create.
What's the difference between .tar.xz and .txz?
Nothing; TXZ is a tar archive compressed with xz, the same content as a file named .tar.xz, just written with one extension instead of two.
Why would software distribute a TXZ instead of just an XZ file?
XZ alone only compresses a single file or stream, so packaging an entire directory tree with permissions and structure intact requires tar first; TXZ is that tar archive compressed with xz in one step.
What's the difference between LZ and ZIP files?
An LZ file holds a single stream compressed with lzip, not a container of separate files like a ZIP. To pack more than one file as lzip, they need to be combined into a tar archive first and the result compressed as a .tar.lz.