TAR.GZ to TAR Converter

How to Convert TAR.GZ to TAR Online

1. Upload Your TAR.GZ File: Drag and drop your .tar.gz or .tgz archive, or click "+ Add Files" to browse. Batch uploads work — queue several archives and they all decompress in one pass.
2. Pick Combine Mode: Default is Single Archive when you upload one file (gives you one decompressed .tar back). If you upload several archives, switch to Individual Archives to get a separate .tar per input, or keep Single Archive to merge their contents into one master tarball.
3. Review File Names (Optional): Output files inherit the input name with the .gz suffix stripped (backup.tar.gz → backup.tar). No re-archiving happens — file headers, permissions, ownership, and timestamps inside the tar are preserved bit-for-bit.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. The gzip layer is stripped server-side and you download a plain .tar archive ready for tools that don't support gzip streams.

Why Convert TAR.GZ to TAR?

A .tar.gz is two formats stacked: tar bundles files into one stream, then gzip (DEFLATE, RFC 1952) compresses that stream. Converting to plain .tar removes the gzip layer while keeping the archive structure intact. Reasons people do this:

• Random-access tooling — gzip is a solid stream, so to read the 500th file inside a .tar.gz your tool must decompress everything before it. A plain .tar lets tools like tar --list, bsdtar -tvf, or libraries that mmap the archive seek directly to a file's header without scanning prior blocks.
• Re-compression with a stronger codec — strip gzip, then re-wrap with xz -9 or zstd --ultra -22 for 20-40% smaller archives on source code and logs. You can't do that in one step without an intermediate decompression.
• Pipeline compatibility — some older build systems, embedded toolchains, and Docker layer importers expect a raw uncompressed tar stream (Docker's docker load accepts both, but custom OCI tooling sometimes does not).
• Damaged gzip layer recovery — if gunzip reports a CRC mismatch but partial data decompressed, saving the recovered bytes as a plain .tar lets tar --ignore-zeros salvage the readable members.
• Streaming to tape or block storage — LTO tape drives and tar-aware backup appliances prefer uncompressed input so the drive's hardware compression engine isn't fed already-compressed data (gzip-in-gzip wastes CPU and grows the file).
• Inspection and diff — tar -tvf archive.tar runs instantly on an uncompressed archive; on a 2 GB .tar.gz it can take 30+ seconds because every byte must pass through the gzip inflater.

TAR.GZ vs TAR — Format Comparison

Common Archive Operations — Quick Guide

Frequently Asked Questions

Will my file get bigger when I convert TAR.GZ to TAR?

Yes — that's expected. Gzip removes redundancy in the tar stream; converting back to plain tar restores the uncompressed size. A 50 MB .tar.gz of source code often expands to 200-300 MB as .tar. If size matters, re-compress with .tar.xz or .tar.zst after conversion.

Is .tgz the same as .tar.gz?

Functionally identical. .tgz is a shortened form for filesystems that historically disliked double extensions (old DOS/Windows 8.3). The bytes inside are the exact same gzip-wrapped tar stream, so our converter accepts both and treats them the same way.

Does the conversion change file contents inside the archive?

No. Only the outer gzip wrapper is removed. File names, directory structure, POSIX permissions (mode bits), UID/GID ownership, modification timestamps, symlinks, and hardlinks inside the tar are preserved byte-for-byte. Run sha256sum on individual files extracted before and after — they match.

Why not just run gunzip locally?

You can — gunzip backup.tar.gz produces backup.tar in one step. This online tool is for users who don't have a terminal handy (Windows users on older builds, Chromebooks without Linux containers, locked-down corporate machines, or mobile devices). On Windows 11 22H2 or later you also have tar.exe built in; on macOS and Linux, tar and gunzip are preinstalled.

Can I convert a password-protected tar.gz?

Standard tar.gz does not support passwords — gzip has no encryption layer. If your file was encrypted, it was either wrapped in something else (GPG, OpenSSL, age) or repackaged as .7z / .zip with AES. Decrypt with the original tool first, then upload the resulting .tar.gz here.

What happens if my tar.gz is corrupted partway through?

Gzip's solid stream means a CRC error usually halts decompression at the bad byte. Our converter returns whatever decompressed successfully before the error. To squeeze more data out, download the partial .tar and run tar --ignore-zeros -xvf partial.tar locally — tar will skip past damaged regions and recover the surviving file members.

Is there a file size limit?

Free users can convert archives up to several GB; the exact ceiling depends on browser memory for the initial upload chunk. For multi-GB scientific datasets or full Linux distro tarballs, the command line (gunzip or tar -xzf) will always be faster than any browser-based tool because it streams without uploading.

Why would I want random access to a tar archive?

If you store backups as .tar.gz and only need to restore one file, you currently decompress the entire archive. Converting to .tar first lets indexing tools (like tar --index-file= or mkindex.tar) build an offset table so future single-file extractions take milliseconds instead of seconds-to-minutes.

Will the output work with tar -xzf?

No — tar -xzf tells tar to expect gzip-compressed input. After conversion, use tar -xf (no z flag) or tar -xvf for verbose listing. Most modern tar implementations auto-detect compression, so tar -xf archive.tar works whether the input is compressed or not, but explicitly dropping the z is cleaner.