GZ

Gzip is a file compression standard created in 1992 as a free replacement for the UNIX compress utility, using DEFLATE compression. A .gz file compresses a single file rather than bundling multiple files; to archive a directory, it is paired with tar to produce a .tar.gz (or .tgz) tarball. Gzip is the standard compression format for HTTP responses, software source tarballs, and Linux package files such as .deb and .rpm.

File extensions	.gz, .tgz
MIME type	application/gzip
Developer	Jean-loup Gailly & Mark Adler
First released	1992
Category	Archives
Open standard	Yes

What opens GZ files

• GNU gzip (all platforms)
• The Unarchiver (macOS)
• 7-Zip (Windows)
• Built-in on macOS and Linux

Browse File Formats

Reference details for 53 file formats — extensions, MIME types, what opens each one, and how they convert.

7Z Archives ABW Documents AI Images AVIF Images AZW3 E-books BMP Images CSS Other CSV Spreadsheets DjVu E-books DOC Documents DOCX Documents EPS Images EPUB E-books FB2 E-books GIF Images GZ Archives HEIC Images HTML Documents ICO Images ISO Archives JPG Images JSON Other Keynote Presentations Markdown Documents MOBI E-books Numbers Spreadsheets ODP Presentations ODS Spreadsheets ODT Documents OTF Other Pages Documents PDF Documents PNG Images PPT Presentations PPTX Presentations PSD Images RAR Archives RAW Images RTF Documents SVG Images TAR Archives TeX / LaTeX Documents TIFF Images TSV Spreadsheets TTF Other TXT Documents WebP Images WOFF / WOFF2 Other WPD Documents XLS Spreadsheets XLSX Spreadsheets XML Documents ZIP Archives