File Formats

Every kind of file, explained: what it is, the software that opens it and how its bytes are laid out. Search by extension, name or program, or drop any file on any page of this site to look inside it.

Categories

Audio

Recordings, compressed music, MIDI and tracker modules, music projects, instruments and playlists.

64 formats

Video

Containers, raw video streams, streaming manifests, subtitles and editing projects.

36 formats

Image

Photos and bitmaps, vector drawings, camera raw, layered projects, icons and retro formats.

67 formats

3D & CAD

Meshes, scenes, modelling projects, engineering drawings, 3D printing and point clouds.

54 formats

Document

Printable pages, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, ebooks, text and fonts.

54 formats

Data

Structured text, binary serialisation, databases, science and maps, AI models, compression and archives.

88 formats

Code

Source code, bytecode, programs and libraries, object files, firmware, shaders and packages.

90 formats

System

Disk and floppy images, keys and certificates, network captures, shortcuts, settings and logs.

39 formats

Fully documented

These formats have a complete reference, with a page for each part of the file, for every version. Drop one on any page and the explorer takes it apart and shows what it holds: the picture, the sound, the notes, the rows or the text.

.FLP

FL Studio project: a header, then one long stream of typed events.

.WAV

Waveform audio: RIFF chunks holding the sample format and the samples.

.MID

MIDI file: tracks of timed note, controller and meta events.

.MOD

Tracker module: samples, an order list and patterns of notes and effects.

.BMP

Windows and OS/2 bitmap: headers, an optional palette and rows of pixels.

.LBM

Deluxe Paint and Amiga IFF picture: chunks holding bit planes or pixels.

.SKP

SketchUp model: an MFC object stream, or since 2021 a ZIP archive.

.TXT

Plain text: UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32 or an old code page, in lines.

.SQLITE

SQLite database: fixed-size pages holding the b-trees of every table.

.TAR

Tar archive: 512-byte headers, each followed by a file’s contents.

.PB

Protocol Buffers: tagged fields, varints and nested messages.

Look inside any file

Drop a file anywhere on this site

It opens in a hex viewer straight away. The file is read in your browser and never leaves your computer.