File Extension .Gz

Files with the GZ file extension are compressed files generated using the GNU Zip or GZip utility. Since GZip was mainly developed for the UNIX platform, GZ files are also commonly found in UNIX-based platform or environment. There are lots of tools and applications today however that is known to create and decompress GZ files even in different platform besides UNIX.

GZ files are most likely similar to BZ2 files – both are archived or compressed files and both are usually used for transferring and/or backing-up files. Packaged or compressed files like GZ files are very ideal for transferring files over the network as it reduces the bandwidth required for the transfer. Since GZ files are compressed files, it would be impossible to know its content unless the user opens or decompresses the files. If the file has a TAR.GZ extension then most likely, it contains an archive of multiple files but if the extension is just GZ, then it will most likely contain a single file.

To open GZ files in the UNIX platform, users can use the shell prompt through the GNUZip command of the GZip utility. In a Windows platform however, GZ files can be opened using the most famous compression and archiving utilities in the market today like WinZip, WinRar, 7-Zip, and many more. Below is the list of more archiving utilities and programs that can be used to decompress and open GZ files: