Z to TAR Converter
FileFlip converts Z 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 Z file to TAR?#
- Drop your Z 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 Z to TAR lose quality?#
No. Converting Z 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 Z files online?#
Yes, because nothing is uploaded. FileFlip converts Z 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 Z to TAR actually does to the file#
Converting Z 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: Z → 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 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.
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.
Z to TAR questions people ask#
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.
Why was Unix compress replaced by gzip?
Unix compress used the LZW algorithm, which Sperry, later Unisys, held a patent on, and the resulting licensing risk pushed the Free Software Foundation to write gzip as a patent-free, better-compressing replacement in 1992. Compress fell out of use well before the LZW patent itself expired in 2003.
Can modern tools still open a .Z file?
Many can: gzip itself can decompress .Z files even though it can't create them, and tools like 7-Zip and The Unarchiver read the format too. Native support has thinned out over the decades, so an old .Z file that a tool won't open usually just needs a dedicated uncompress utility or a converter.
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.