Other than compressing local files, GZ compression is often used to compress elements of web pages to speed up page loading. This is important, as an increase in web page loading can reduce bounce rate (visitors leaving your site) by up to 32%. GZ shares many traits with the ZIP file format and is widely used in the same sense – compressing files. Many people are scouring the web in search of answers to their questions related to the GZ file format. A new window opens to manage where and how to extract files. It usually doesn’t come preinstalled in older Windows systems.
While the tar utility is enough for most purposes, you’ll need the gzip utility to create .tar.gz files. Though gzip is the most common compression utility, it’s not the only one. As you might imagine, using a different compression utility on a .tar file will result in a different double extension. Some common examples include .tar.bz2 (bzip2), .tar.br (Brotli), and .tar.zst (zstd), among many others.
As we’ll cover more in the next section, you can verify file names by listing contents with the tar -tf filename.tar.gz command. Again, the above commands will extract to the current working directory by default. You can use the -C option to extract to a different directory (in this case, /home/user/files). Otherwise, keep reading to learn how to unzip .tar.gz files in Linux, macOS, and Windows. Since GZ files are compressed formats, after all, it goes without saying that extracting them requires a utility that can perform this task.
How to open a GZ file
Much like a ZIP file, the GZ file format is used for file compression. And with the GZ file extension, it’s possible to store single files. This error occurs if you try to decompress a file without specifying a decompression utility, specifically -z for gzip. But with .zip being the easier of the two to use, why use .tar in the first place? As we’ll see in the next section, .tar comes with a few extra features that make it the better compression format for certain files and applications. Since your GZ file might not be compatible with the software you intend to use, it’s a good idea to convert it into a more accessible compression format.
- These files are often referred to as “tarballs.” While you can find them with a double extension (.tar.gz), the extension can also be shortened to .tgz or .gz.
- Once you’ve converted your GZ file into a ZIP file, follow these steps to encrypt it.
- Once you complete the steps, you will have all the files and folders extracted to the destination path you specified after a few moments.
- Unlike Windows’ convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for unzipping .zip files, you’ll need to use the tar utility through the command line.
This guide will teach you the steps to use native tar commands on Windows 10 from Command Prompt and Ubuntu to extract the content of a .tar.gz file. Some third-party tools also offer extended flexibility for converting between file types, saving more time if you want to change between compression formats. The tar command also provides support for extracting only specific files or directories from a .tar.gz file. Simply add a space-separated list of the files you want to extract. But using WinZip, you can instead create ZIP files that share the same benefits as the GZ file format with better accessibility. So if you’re having trouble creating GZ files in WinZip, follow this detailed guide on how to create a ZIP file instead.
As we’ll see later, different compression utilities may require different methods for extracting and unzipping files. Though we’ll mostly focus on .tar.gz files, check out the end of the https://www.coinbreakingnews.info/ article for some quick tips on extracting .tar files in other formats. The command bundles multiple files and directories into a single file archive but doesn’t compress data on its own.
The most commonly used programs to open GZ files are WinZip or the native GZIP software for Unix and Linux users. After the option, you have to specify the path of the tarball file to extract. In the command, we start the path with /mnt/c/ since this is Linux, not Windows. Alternatively, select Extract files to pick where to extract the files. If you want to keep the original file after compression, there are two options.
By following these steps, you should now be able to extract GZ files in whatever manner you find useful. If you’re working with similar file types, our how to open TGZ file guide should come in handy. However, WinZip can only be used to encrypt ZIP files, which means that your GZ file has to be converted first. Alternatively, select one of the offered locations or set one up by clicking the Extract files… option. You can also add the verbose output option (-v) to provide detailed listings, including dates, securities/permissions, and more. Once you complete the steps, you will have all the files and folders extracted to the destination path you specified after a few moments.
tar: Unrecognized archive format
These files are often referred to as “tarballs.” While you can find them with a double extension (.tar.gz), the extension can also be shortened to .tgz or .gz. In this guide, you will learn the steps to use native tar commands on Windows 11 using Command Prompt and Ubuntu to extract the content of a .tar.gz file. Since .tar.gz compresses multiple files all https://www.topbitcoinnews.org/ at once, it can take advantage of similarities between individual files to save on space. It’s often useful to list the contents of a .tar.gz file without having to unzip the entire archive. Of course, that’s not to say .tar files are some kind of “lesser” format than .zip. Rather, they both accomplish the same task (file compression) in the same way.
Therefore, it is often used with compression tools, such as gzip (tar.gz files) or bzip2 (tar.bz2 files), to reduce the overall archive size. Though both .zip and .tar.gz archive and compress files, they do so in different ways. In other words, .zip is a collection of compressed files, while .tar.gz is a compressed collection of files. Where .zip files consist of many individually compressed files, .tar files are compressed as a single package, leaving its files uncompressed.
Where most operating systems make it easy to extract and create .zip files, the same can’t really be said for .tar files — at least not in ways that are easy to notice. Windows 11 includes native support to extract “.tar.gz” files using Command Prompt without needing third-party tools. You can even use a Linux distro through the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to quickly extract tarballs created on another platform. Where commands have little (if any) room for typos or omissions, many common errors are the result of small mistakes, misspellings, or incorrect formats.
For a more GUI-friendly approach to extracting .tar.gz files, use 7-Zip. Like the tar utility, gzip also allows you to zip and unzip multiple files or entire directories at a time. You can just as easily unzip the resulting .tar.gz file with the decompress (-d) option. Note that this command will throw an error unless you specify the exact filename listed in the .tar file.
Unzip .tar.gz in Linux
The first is the -k option, and the other uses the -c option to output the compressed file to a different file, preserving the original. Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade.
Only Extract Specific Files or Directories From .tar.gz in Linux
However, while tools like 7-Zip are free, many more “robust” solutions are only available for a price after a trial period. As a result, we recommend sticking to free (but trustworthy) tools or simply using the command line. While there are many tools to choose from, the most popular include 7-Zip and WinZip. While slightly different, they are quite lightweight and offer a much simpler alternative to using the command line.
Extract .tar.gz, .tgz, .gz tarballs using tar on Windows 10
In this example, the user tried to extract the file titled “FILE” from filename.tar.gz. However, tar was unable to find FILE within .tar.gz, meaning that the user either misspelled the https://www.cryptominer.services/ name or that the file simply doesn’t exist in filename.tar.gz. Another common cause of errors is case sensitivity, where Linux treats “FILE” and “file” as two separate entities.
Yes, you can open and convert any GZ file on macOS with WinZip. Simply right-click, select “open with”, and click on WinZip. With WinZip, you can open and convert any GZ file on Windows. Once you’ve converted your GZ file into a ZIP file, follow these steps to encrypt it.