TAR to ZIP

How to convert TAR to ZIP

1. Drag a .tar file onto the drop zone, or click Choose a file to browse for it.
2. The Password (only if the archive is encrypted) field can stay blank. Plain TAR files have no encryption, and the field is meant for encrypted ZIP sources.
3. Click Convert to ZIP. Each file in the tarball is read and written into a compressed ZIP.
4. Use the Download button to save the result, named like the original: backup.tar becomes backup.zip.

The tarball is read by libarchive running in your browser as WebAssembly, and the ZIP is written by zip.js. The file stays on your device the whole time.

Why a tarball and a ZIP are different

TAR (short for "tape archive") dates back to Unix backups on magnetic tape. It simply concatenates files one after another with a header for each, and it does no compression at all. That is why a .tar file is roughly as large as the files inside it added together. On Linux and macOS you would normally unpack one with tar -xf backup.tar, and TAR is common in Docker image exports, server backups and data dumps.

ZIP compresses each file individually and is understood natively by Windows, macOS and mobile devices. Converting a TAR to ZIP therefore does two useful things at once: it makes the archive open with a double-click on any desktop, and, unlike plain TAR, it actually compresses the contents. Text files, logs, CSV exports and source code often shrink a lot; photos, videos and other already-compressed files stay about the same size.

What carries over from the TAR

File contents and the complete folder hierarchy are written into the ZIP, which uses Deflate at the normal level. Long paths and non-English file names read from the tarball are kept as they are.

Some information is not part of the conversion. Original modification dates cannot be read from a tarball in the browser, so files in the ZIP get the current date. File permissions (such as the executable bit), user and group ownership, and empty directories are not copied either. If you are moving a set of shell scripts or a program between Linux machines and need those details, stay with TAR or TAR.GZ and unpack it with the tar command on the destination.

Tips

• For a .tar.gz or .tgz file, use TAR.GZ to ZIP. Other compressed tarballs, such as .tar.bz2 and .tar.xz, go through the Archive Converter.
• If all you want is the files, Extract TAR lists them for individual download.
• To produce a tarball from a ZIP instead, see ZIP to TAR.
• Big result? Split ZIP divides it into parts that each open on their own.

Frequently asked questions

Will the ZIP be smaller than the TAR?

Usually, because TAR is uncompressed and ZIP applies Deflate. The saving depends on the content: text-heavy archives shrink a lot, media files hardly at all.

Are file dates preserved?

No. The dates stored in the tarball are not available to the browser, so every ZIP entry gets the date of the conversion. Use tar -xf on your computer if you need the original timestamps.

Can it handle a very large TAR backup?

The archive is processed in browser memory. Tarballs up to about 700 MB convert at a comfortable pace, larger ones are slow, and anything over 2 GB is refused. For bigger backups, a command-line tool is the better choice.

Can I convert several TAR files in one go?

No, one archive per conversion. Run the tool again for the next file.