Extract .tar.bz2 Files Online

How to extract a TAR.BZ2 file online

1. Drop the .tar.bz2 or .tbz2 file onto the box above, or click to choose it.
2. Wait for the listing, then browse the folders or search by name.
3. Download single files, save the tree to a folder, or download everything as a .zip.

Two layers, opened in one go

A .tar.bz2 is a tar archive, which bundles files and folders into one stream, compressed afterwards with bzip2. Many desktop tools make you unpack it twice: first you get a .tar, then you open that. Here the two layers are unwrapped together and you land in the file tree.

The format is common for source code releases, scientific data sets and older Linux software, from the years when bzip2 was the standard choice for better compression than gzip. Windows users in particular meet it when a project only publishes a tarball.

Why one file from a big tarball can take a while

A compressed tarball is one continuous compressed stream. There is no index that says where a given file starts, so to reach a file the data in front of it has to be decompressed first. bzip2 is also slower to decompress than gzip or Zstandard. For a small archive you will not notice; for a multi-gigabyte one, expect a wait and use the progress bar and its cancel button as needed.

Getting the files onto a non-Unix system

If the goal is to hand the contents to someone on Windows, download everything as a .zip, or pick .7z or .tar.gz as the output format. Unix permissions and symbolic links are not carried over into the repacked archive, so do not use the result to deploy software that depends on them. The tarball is unpacked on your device; none of it is sent over the network.

Frequently asked questions

How do I open a .tar.bz2 file on Windows?

Drop it on this page. The tarball is decompressed and unpacked in your browser and you can download the files or a ZIP of them. No extra software is needed.

What is the difference between .tar.bz2 and .tbz2?

None. .tbz2 is a short spelling of the same format, and both are opened the same way.

Can I convert a TAR.BZ2 to ZIP?

Yes. After the archive is open, download everything and choose .zip as the format. Unix permissions and symbolic links are not kept.

Is there a file size limit?

No fixed cap. Extracted data is written to the browser’s temporary storage on disk, so the practical limit is the free space available to it. Large bzip2 archives are slow to read.

I have a plain .bz2 file, not a tarball. Does it work?

Yes. A single compressed file has its own page: use the BZ2 decompressor.