File Formats

Every kind of file, explained: what it is, the software that opens it and how its bytes are laid out. Drop any file on any page of this site to look inside it.

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.

Categories

Audio

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

12 formats

Video

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

9 formats

Images

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

18 formats

3D & CAD

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

14 formats

Documents

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

12 formats

Data

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

23 formats

Code

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

22 formats

System

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

10 formats

Fully documented

These formats have a complete reference, with a page for each part of the file.

.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.

.BMP

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

.TAR

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