Novus Convert
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Archive format

TXZ converter

A .txz file is a TAR archive compressed as one XZ stream—the compact spelling of .tar.xz. TAR supplies the directory and file metadata; XZ supplies LZMA2 compression and integrity checks around that byte stream.

Private for supported formats — processed in your browser

Convert supported files

Runs on your device

Drop TXZ files here

Batch files can each use a different output. Nothing uploads for local conversions.

Working inputs include camera RAW, browser-local audio/video, PDF, CBZ/CBR comics, office documents, ebooks, markup, 3D models, structured text, images, and archives.

Where TXZ comes from

XZ Utils began as the successor to the LZMA tools in the late 2000s, and GNU tar added direct XZ support soon afterwards. The .txz suffix follows the older .tgz convention: one short extension standing in for a two-stage .tar.xz pipeline. Linux distributions use XZ heavily for source releases and packages because it trades slower compression for substantially smaller archives.

How TXZ works

  • The six-byte XZ magic is FD 37 7A 58 5A 00, followed by stream flags protected by CRC-32.
  • LZMA2 divides data into independently resettable chunks and can also carry uncompressed chunks, which is how the deterministic browser fixture proves the complete framing without adding an encoder dependency.
  • An index at the end records every block's compressed and uncompressed sizes, and the footer points backward to that index.
  • XZ commonly uses CRC-64 for payload checks; this verified fixture uses the standard CRC-32 check type, which remains fully interoperable.
  • The decompressed payload is an ordinary TAR, so member paths and metadata are interpreted only after the XZ layer passes its checks.

When to use TXZ

  • Opening a Linux source release distributed as .txz
  • Repacking a compact Unix archive as ZIP for a Windows recipient
  • Inspecting an XZ tarball without installing an archive utility
  • Recovering individual files from a package or backup tarball

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Excellent compression ratios for source trees and other repeated text
  • Standard integrity checks cover the stream and every block
  • Widely supported by tar, bsdtar, 7-Zip and modern package tools

Limitations

  • Compression is much slower and more memory-intensive than Gzip or Zstandard
  • Reading one late member generally requires decompressing the stream before it
  • The short .txz spelling is less immediately recognizable than .tar.xz

Compatibility

GNU tar, XZ Utils, bsdtar, 7-Zip and PeaZip read .txz directly. Novus Convert validates and expands the XZ stream locally, then writes the members as ZIP, TAR or TAR.GZ. Its bundled browser fixture is independently reopened by Windows bsdtar so the published routes do not depend on the app accepting its own bytes.

XZ has stream checks but no filenames of its own; paths, modes, ownership and timestamps come from the TAR inside. ZIP output retains paths and timestamps where representable but cannot faithfully carry Unix ownership.

Convert TXZ to another format