Create TAR File

Create a TAR file online: bundle files and folders into an uncompressed .tar archive for Linux, servers and backups. Free, private, in your browser.

Files are processed in your browser and never uploaded.

How to create a TAR file

  1. Add files with Choose files or by dragging them onto the drop zone. Use Add a folder, or drop a folder, to include a whole directory with its subfolders.
  2. Enter an Archive name. With the default archive you get archive.tar.
  3. Click Create TAR.
  4. Save the result with its Download button.

The tar file is assembled in your browser. None of your files are uploaded.

What tar does, and what it does not

Tar was created for Unix in the late 1970s to write files to magnetic tape, and its name still means "tape archive". It does one job: it joins many files and folders into a single file, keeping each one's path and metadata. It does not compress. A .tar of 100 MB of documents is slightly larger than 100 MB, because every file gets a 512-byte header and is padded to a multiple of 512 bytes.

That sounds like a drawback, but uncompressed tar is useful when:

  • the files are already compressed (photos, video, ZIPs), so compressing again only costs time;
  • you plan to compress the tar later with your own choice of tool and settings;
  • a program explicitly asks for a .tar upload, as some container, firmware and hosting tools do;
  • you want an archive that can be read quickly and streamed without decompression.

Format details

Archives are written in the POSIX pax format, the modern tar standard from POSIX.1-2001. Older tar layouts limit paths to around 100 characters and only handle plain ASCII names; pax stores the full path in an extended header, so long paths and non-English file names such as Präsentation.pdf or Japanese folder names survive intact. Each file's original modification date is recorded too, which makes tar a good choice for backups and for handing project folders to colleagues.

Empty folders are skipped, and duplicate paths get " (2)" or " (3)" appended rather than overwriting each other.

To unpack the result, use tar -xf archive.tar on Linux, macOS or Windows 10 and 11, double-click it in macOS Finder, or open it in any common archiver. The equivalent command to create one yourself is tar -cf archive.tar folder/.

Tips

  • Want the same bundle compressed? Create TAR.GZ is the most widely understood option, Create TAR.XZ gives smaller files.
  • Sending to Windows users who do not use the command line? Create ZIP is the safest choice.
  • To convert an existing ZIP to tar, use ZIP to TAR.
Tip: Browsers do not record Unix permissions such as the executable bit, so scripts packed here will not be marked executable after extraction. Run chmod +x on them, or create the tar on the machine with the tar command when permissions matter.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my TAR file bigger than the original files?

Tar adds a header to every file and pads each one to 512-byte blocks, with no compression. Choose TAR.GZ, TAR.BZ2 or TAR.XZ for a smaller file.

Are file dates kept?

Yes. Each file's modification time is written into the archive and restored by standard extractors.

How much can I put in one TAR?

The archive is built in memory. Totals over about 700 MB are slow, and more than 2 GB is refused.

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