Loona TAR to ZIP Converter - Turn a .tar Archive into a .zip
TAR is the classic Unix archive format - a tarball bundles many files into one, but Windows has historically had no built-in way to open it, and phones still struggle. If a .tar lands in your inbox, converting it to ZIP makes it open everywhere. The whole conversion runs locally in your browser.
How to use the TAR to ZIP Converter
- Drop your .tar file onto the box above, or click it and pick the file from your device.
- Click Convert to ZIP. The tarball is read on your device and its files are repacked as a ZIP, paths preserved.
- Check the summary: how many files were inside and the size of the new ZIP.
- Click Download to save the .zip file.
How it works
A TAR file is not compressed at all - it is a sequence of 512-byte header blocks and file contents, one after another, which is why tarballs are exactly the sum of their files plus a little padding. This page reads the TAR with a WebAssembly build of libarchive in your browser, then writes the same entries into a ZIP with JSZip, this time with DEFLATE compression applied. That is why the resulting ZIP is usually much smaller than the TAR you started with - the conversion adds the compression TAR never had.
Worked example
A Linux server hands you www-backup.tar (96 MB) of website files. You need to browse it on a Windows laptop. The tool finds 1,208 files inside and produces www-backup.zip at just 31 MB - the first real compression the data has had - and it opens in Explorer like any other ZIP.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this TAR to ZIP converter free?
Yes - free, no sign-up, no limits and no watermarks.
Are my files uploaded to a server?
No. The TAR is read and the ZIP is written entirely in your browser; your files never leave your device.
Why did the file get so much smaller?
TAR itself stores files uncompressed - it only bundles them. ZIP applies DEFLATE compression to every file, so text-heavy tarballs (code, logs, HTML) often shrink by half or more.
My file is .tar.gz, not .tar. Does this page work?
Use the TAR.GZ to ZIP Converter instead - a .tar.gz is a TAR wrapped in gzip compression, and that page unwraps both layers in one step.
Will the folder structure stay the same?
Yes. Every entry is repacked at its original path, including nested folders and empty directories' files. Symbolic links inside a TAR are stored as small text entries by the archive reader and cannot be recreated as working links inside a ZIP.