Decompress .bz2 Files Online

How to decompress a BZ2 file online

1. Drop the .bz2 file onto the box above, or click to choose it.
2. The original file is listed, named like the compressed file without .bz2. Text files can be previewed right away.
3. Download the decompressed file.

Where .bz2 files come from

bzip2 is a Unix compressor from the late 1990s that squeezes text noticeably better than gzip. It was the usual choice for large public data dumps and still is in places: encyclopedia and map database exports, genomics and other research data, mailing-list archives, old log backups.

Like gzip and XZ, it compresses one file. The .bz2 contains no folders and no stored name, so dump.xml.bz2 decompresses to dump.xml.

Single file or tarball?

If the name ends in .tar.bz2 or .tbz2, what is inside is a tar archive with a whole folder tree. That has its own page, although dropping it here works too: the tar layer is unwrapped and you see the files.

Speed and size

bzip2 is slow to decompress compared with newer formats, and this runs as single-threaded WebAssembly, so a multi-gigabyte dump takes a while. A progress bar shows where it is and can be cancelled. The expanded file is written to the browser’s temporary storage on disk, so make sure there is free space for it: text dumps often grow to five or ten times the compressed size. Your data is decompressed locally and stays on your computer.

Frequently asked questions

How do I open a .bz2 file without bunzip2?

Drop it on this page. It is decompressed in the browser and you download the original file. That works on Windows, macOS, Linux and ChromeOS in a current desktop browser.

Is .bz2 the same as .tar.bz2?

No. A .bz2 is one compressed file. A .tar.bz2 is an archive of many files compressed with bzip2; see the TAR.BZ2 extractor.

Why is decompression slow?

bzip2 needs more work per byte than gzip or Zstandard, and the browser version runs on one CPU core. Large files take correspondingly longer.

How big can the file be?

There is no fixed cap. The decompressed output goes to the browser’s temporary storage on disk, so the limit is the free space available there.

Is the file sent to a server?

No. Decompression happens on your device and the page works offline after loading.