Convert TAR to ZIP
A .tar is a container with no compression at all — it just concatenates files with 512-byte headers. That makes it ubiquitous on Unix and awkward on Windows, where it is both unusually large and not natively browsable in older systems.
Converting to ZIP does two things at once: it changes the container to one every operating system understands, and it actually compresses the contents, which a plain tar never did.
The archive is read by code running in this tab. It is not uploaded, not queued on a server, and not seen by anyone but you — which also means there is no size limit imposed from outside, only what your own device can hold.
- Step 1Drop a .tar file. Tar has no magic number at offset zero, so it is identified from its USTAR header and header checksum.
- Step 2Check the entry list. Long paths stored through PAX or GNU extensions are shown in full.
- Step 3Convert to ZIP, then verify — the output is re-parsed before download.
Drag archives here
.tar— or anything else, and the format will be identified from the file’s own bytes. Files stay on this device.
What this page will not do
Every limit below is a real one, checked against real archives. None of them are upsells — there is no paid tier, and nothing here gets better by signing in.
- Unix ownership, permission bits and device nodes are not carried into the ZIP. ZIP has no portable representation for them, and inventing one would produce an archive that behaves differently depending on which tool opens it.
- Symbolic and hard links are listed but not written into the ZIP.
- Tar timestamps are preserved, because tar records them in a form we can read — unlike the RAR and 7z paths.
- A .tar.gz is a gzip wrapping a tar; use the TAR.GZ route for those, though dropping one here will still be detected correctly.
If it did not work
“No TAR entries were found”
Why: The file is not a tar, or its first header block is damaged.
Do this: Open it in the archive viewer, which will name whatever format the bytes actually are.
File names look truncated or have odd characters
Why: Very long names are stored in PAX or GNU extension records rather than the 100-byte header field.
Do this: Both are read here, including multi-byte names. If a name still looks wrong, the tar was probably written with a non-UTF-8 locale; the archive viewer shows the raw stored bytes.
The ZIP is much smaller than the TAR
Why: Expected — tar does not compress and ZIP does.
Do this: Nothing to fix. The re-read check confirms every file is present at its original size.
Questions
Does this preserve folder structure?
Yes. Directory paths are kept exactly, including empty directories, subject to the path-safety rules that block entries trying to write outside the output folder.
What about file permissions?
They are shown in the listing but not written to the ZIP. If permissions matter, keep the tar — that is what tar is for.