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TAR Extractor

Open a tar archive in your browser and download its contents as a ZIP. Traversal paths, absolute paths and oversized payloads are refused.

Choose a tar archive

Choose a .tar archive to see its entries here.

For .tar.gz, decompress here first with the GZIP Extractor — each step is verified separately.

Extracted

The ZIP of verified contents appears here.

Your file is never sent to a server. It is read and processed by your own browser, and the results are not stored.

How to use it

  1. Choose a .tar file (for .tar.gz, extract the gzip first).
  2. Check the entry list before extracting anything.
  3. Extract; the result is one ZIP download with the same layout.

Limits worth knowing

  • ustar and GNU tar with POSIX names are supported; other dialects may fail with a checksum or magic error.
  • Suspicious entries (traversal, absolute paths, oversize payloads) fail the whole operation; none are extracted.
  • Zero-length files and directories are preserved in the ZIP.
  • Untrusted archives are refused rather than "helpfully" re-rooted.

The name in the header is the attack

A tar header is just bytes; your extractor is the thing that honours them. "../../etc/passwd" means something to an unwise extractor and to nothing this tool produces — the name is refused before any data is read out, and the whole archive is refused with it.

Absolute paths are equally absolute: a leading slash or a Windows drive letter is a statement about where the file goes on a machine the page does not control. Refused.

Why the output is a ZIP

The browser cannot write into your file system. A ZIP re-packages the verified contents with the same relative paths, which every OS and archive tool can then open in one step — same layout, without the traversal risk.

Frequently asked questions

Does TAR Extractor upload my files to any server?

No. TAR Extractor runs in your browser, and the file is read there rather than sent to a server for processing. Our host still sees ordinary page-request metadata, which is described on the privacy page.

Is TAR Extractor free to use?

Yes, TAR Extractor is free, with no paid tier, no account, and no watermark added to your output. The limits are technical rather than commercial: file size, page count and supported formats are listed on this page.

What file formats and sizes are supported?

TAR Extractor supports .tar files up to 512MB directly in your browser.

Does it write files to my disk?

No. The archive is parsed in memory and everything is packaged into one ZIP download. Your browser’s file system is never touched by the tool itself.

What happens to ../ entries?

They are refused outright and the whole operation fails with the offending names shown — the tool never rewrites or "fixes" them silently.

What about tar.gz?

Wrap it: run it through GZIP Extractor first, then this tool. A dedicated .tar.gz path is coming; until then, two steps keep both operations fully verified.

Why can’t it extract huge archives?

Entries and total bytes are capped (2000 entries / 512 MB). A tar file is streamed greedily by design, and an unbounded extractor is exactly how decompression bombs work.