File extension GZ is used for GNU ZIP compressed files. A GNU ZIP sample file is provided. Free software for creating and opening GNU ZIP files are listed.

File Extension: .GZ

MIME Type: application/x-gzip

File Content: Compressed files

What is GZ? GZ is a short name for GZIP (GNU zip), a file format created originally by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler in 1992.

Some technical notes on GZIP file format:

• GZIP file format is used to store the compressed version of a single file.
• The GZIP compression is based on the DEFLATE algorithm, which is a combination of LZ77 and Huffman coding.
• GZIP file format is commonly used together with the TAR file format to archive and compress multiple files into a single file, with a file extension called ".tgz" or ".tar.gz".
• GZIP file format does not support password protection.

GZ is the file extension for GZIP files.

GZIP files are binary files. Here are the first 64 bytes of a sample GZIP file dumped in HEX values:

1f 8b 08 08 a0 b3 10 41 00 00 73 61 6d 70 6c 65 .......A..sample
2e 65 78 65 00 ed 3a 7f 78 53 d7 75 57 96 1c 04 .exe....xS.uW...
18 24 56 1b dc c4 24 a2 81 e2 80 31 3f 0c 29 8e ..V........1....
70 83 83 65 4c 63 81 40 c6 c6 e3 87 23 24 99 27 p..eLc..........

"0x1f8b" seems to be the magic number used to identify GZIP files.

GZIP sample file: Click sample.gz to download.

GZIP files can be created and decompressed by free compression software:

• gzip and gunzip - Creates and decompresses GZIP files. An open source software.
• 7-Zip - Creates and decompresses GZIP files. An open source software.
• WinRAR - Creates and decompresses GZIP files. A shareware.