TB2 to TZ2 Converter

How to Convert TB2 to TZ2 Online

1. Upload Your TB2 File: Drag and drop or click "+ Add Files" to load one or more .tb2 archives. Batch uploads are supported — drop a folder of bzip2-compressed tarballs and rename them all to .tz2 in a single pass. Files stay on our servers and are not retained on a permanent server.
2. Pick Combine Mode: Under "Combine?" choose Individual Archives (the default when the input is an archive) to produce one .tz2 for each input .tb2 — the right choice when you just need each file relabeled for a pipeline that expects the .tz2 spelling. Pick Single Archive if you instead want to unpack every uploaded .tb2 and re-pack the merged contents into one combined .tz2.
3. Review the Output Extension: The output is written with the .tz2 extension. Because .tb2 and .tz2 are both Wikipedia-documented short aliases for .tar.bz2, the underlying bytes are unchanged when you use Individual Archives — the file is the same tar stream wrapped in the same bzip2 layer, just with a different filename. GNU tar and BSD tar autodetect the format from the bzip2 magic bytes (BZh at offset 0), so tar -xf archive.tz2 and tar -xf archive.tb2 behave identically on Linux and macOS.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. No account, no watermark, no email required. The tar inner archive preserves filenames, directory structure, POSIX modes, symlinks, hard links, and modification timestamps exactly as they were inside the original .tb2.

Why Convert TB2 to TZ2?

.tb2 and .tz2 are two of the four short single-extension aliases Wikipedia documents for a tar archive compressed with bzip2 (canonical name .tar.bz2); the other two are .tbz and .tbz2. The bytes inside are identical — a tar stream wrapped by bzip2's Burrows–Wheeler Transform plus Huffman coding on blocks of 100–900 KB (Julian Seward's bzip2, released in 1997). So why rename .tb2 to .tz2? Because tools, mirrors, and build scripts often pattern-match on the extension instead of inspecting magic bytes, so the spelling matters more than it should. Typical scenarios:

• Mirror or download-index naming — Some legacy Unix mirrors and a handful of community ports trees standardize on .tz2 and skip files with other bzip2 suffixes from their indexes. If your release artifacts have to drop into one of those indexes, the rename is mandatory.
• Aligning with consumer tooling expectations — A small set of older build scripts, RPM %prep sections, and CI helpers hard-code *.tz2 as the bzip2 variant. Easier to rename the artifact than to patch a vendored script you don't own.
• Disambiguating from .tb2 collisions — .tb2 is also the file extension for Turbo Pascal Tour bookmark files and (rarely) for some bitmap thumbnail caches. Renaming to .tz2 removes that ambiguity on mixed-tooling shares where MIME sniffing isn't available.
• Round-tripping through extension allowlists — Some upload forms, email gateways, and web filters silently strip unfamiliar extensions. If a gateway accepts .tz2 but not .tb2 (or vice versa), repacking under the accepted spelling avoids the silent drop.
• Documentation and release-page consistency — When your README or release notes list .tz2 as the bzip2 variant, your published artifact should match — confused-user emails about "where's the tz2?" go away.
• Combining multiple .tb2 files — Switch the Combine mode to Single Archive to unpack several .tb2 inputs and merge their contents into one consolidated .tz2 release tarball. Same convention tar uses internally: when two inputs share the same path, the later one wins.

Need a different compression algorithm rather than just a rename? Try TB2 to tar.gz for faster extraction, TB2 to tar.xz for tighter compression, or TB2 to ZIP for the Windows-native option. To unpack a .tb2 instead of re-wrapping it, use Extract TB2. To flip back from TZ2, see TZ2 to TB2.

TB2 vs TZ2 vs Other tar.bz2 Aliases — Same Bytes, Different Spelling

All five hold a tar stream compressed with bzip2. Converting TB2 to TZ2 rewrites the filename, not the contents.

tar.bz2 vs Related Archive Formats

Frequently Asked Questions

Is .tb2 actually different from .tz2?

No — both are short aliases for a tar archive compressed with bzip2, alongside .tbz and .tbz2. The file's leading magic bytes (BZh at offset 0) identify the compression layer, and any modern tar implementation autodetects that regardless of filename. Renaming archive.tb2 to archive.tz2 on the command line produces an identical, working archive. The xconvert converter does the same thing in Individual Archives mode — it pipes the bytes through with the new extension. Single Archive mode is different: it actually unpacks each input and re-tars/re-compresses the merged contents, so the output bytes will differ from any single input.

Why does my tool accept .tz2 but reject .tb2 (or vice versa)?

A surprising number of tools pattern-match the extension instead of inspecting magic bytes. RPM spec files, older Makefiles, ports-tree fetchers, some package-manager indexers, and upload allowlists fall into this group. Both .tb2 and .tz2 are rarer than .tar.bz2 or .tbz2, so either one can fall outside a hard-coded allowlist. Converting to the spelling your consumer expects is the fix when patching the consumer isn't an option.

Will the converted TZ2 be smaller than the TB2?

If you pick Individual Archives, no — the bytes are identical and the size is unchanged to the byte. Only the filename changes. If you pick Single Archive to merge multiple inputs, the output bzip2 stream sees all the merged tar contents at once and may compress slightly better than the sum of its inputs because bzip2 can find repeating patterns spanning what were originally separate files. For text-heavy payloads (source code, configs, logs) the merge-mode savings are usually 5–15%; for already-compressed payloads (JPEG, MP4, MP3) the difference is near zero.

Can I extract a .tz2 file on Windows without installing anything?

It depends on the spelling and the Windows version. Windows 11 23H2 (October 31, 2023, via KB5031455) added libarchive-based extraction to File Explorer, and Microsoft's announcement listed .tar.bz2 and .tbz2 among supported formats — .tb2 and the rarer .tz2 were not in the announced list, so right-click "Extract All" may not surface for them. The reliable cross-version fix on Windows is the tar.exe command Microsoft has bundled since Windows 10 1803 (April 2018): from PowerShell or cmd, tar -xf archive.tz2 works because tar autodetects the bzip2 header regardless of the file's extension. 7-Zip, WinRAR, and PeaZip all extract .tz2 natively.

Does the conversion preserve POSIX permissions and symlinks?

Yes. Tar (the inner format) records Unix file modes, owner/group IDs, symbolic links, hard links, and modification times. Since both .tb2 and .tz2 wrap the same tar inner format, none of that metadata is touched by the rename. If the original .tb2 was created on Windows or by a tool that didn't capture POSIX bits (some GUI archivers skip them), the converter cannot restore information that was never there — but it won't strip anything either.

How do I extract a .tz2 file on Linux or macOS?

Run tar -xf archive.tz2 from the terminal — -x extracts, -f specifies the file. Older GNU tar releases required an explicit -j flag for bzip2 (tar -xjf), but every GNU tar release since the 1.15 series in 2004, and BSD tar shipped with macOS since 10.5 (Leopard, 2007), autodetect compression from the bzip2 magic bytes — the flag is no longer required. To list contents without extracting, use tar -tf archive.tz2.

Why is bzip2 slower than gzip if it compresses better?

Bzip2 applies the Burrows–Wheeler Transform on blocks of 100–900 KB followed by move-to-front and Huffman coding — computationally heavier than gzip's sliding-window LZ77+Huffman approach. The trade-off is roughly 3–5× slower compression and 2–3× slower decompression than gzip, in exchange for typically 10–15% smaller archives on text payloads. For one-time downloads where bandwidth matters more than CPU, the trade-off pays off; for build artifacts you extract dozens of times a day, gzip usually wins. If you need gzip's speed, use TB2 to tar.gz.

Is there a file size limit on this converter?

There is no hard cap published for TB2-to-TZ2 conversions, and files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after the session, so file size limits depend on your upload bandwidth and our server-imposed quota and CPU. Individual Archives mode mostly streams bytes through with a filename change, so multi-gigabyte archives are usually fine. Single Archive mode unpacks and re-compresses, which takes more memory and CPU; expect noticeably longer processing time on archives of 1 GB+ because of bzip2's compute cost.

Can I go back from .tz2 to .tb2 afterward?

Yes. Use TZ2 to TB2 to flip the extension back. Because both are aliases for .tar.bz2, the round trip in Individual Archives mode preserves the original bytes exactly. If you need a different operation entirely, Extract TZ2 unpacks the archive directly, and TZ2 to ZIP repacks it as ZIP for Windows-first recipients.