Open a .tar.zst online
Open, browse, preview, or extract a .tar.zst in your browser — no command line, no upload.
Drop your .tar.zst anywhere on this page
Decoded entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
A .tar.zst (also .tzst) is two formats stacked: tar bundles many files into one stream with no compression, and zstd squeezes that stream. It is the modern successor to .tar.gz across much of the Linux world — a bit tighter and much faster to unpack — and the usual way one is created is tar --zstd. ZipTool does the reverse without the terminal: you drop the file on the page and both layers are decoded in your browser, with nothing uploaded and nothing installed.
You open the page, drop the .tar.zst onto it (or paste a direct URL), and the file tree renders locally — Unix file paths preserved. Browse the contents, search by name, and preview code, images, audio, video, and PDFs without unpacking anything to disk — then extract when you are ready. The decode runs entirely in your tab.
What you can do with a tar.zst here
One archive, three workflows — pick the one that matches what you need.
- Browse and preview — look inside the tarball without writing anything to disk. Click any entry to read source code with syntax highlighting, view images, or render a PDF. Useful for auditing a package or dataset before you commit to it.
- Extract — get the real files out. Use extract-all to write the original files to a folder you choose (Chrome/Edge) or download them as a bundle (Firefox/Safari).
- Convert — re-pack the tarball as a standard ZIP for recipients on Windows or macOS. The in-page converter reads the
.tar.zstentries already in memory and writes a ZIP from them. - Search — filter the file tree by name across the whole archive to find one file without unpacking it.
tar.zst, .tar, and .zst — three different things
The extensions get conflated, but they mean different things, and ZipTool handles each honestly. A `.tar.zst` is a tar bundle of many files compressed with zstd — the modern Linux packaging standard. A `.tar` is the same bundle with no compression. A `.zst` is a single file compressed with zstd, not a multi-file container at all.
.tzst is simply the short spelling of .tar.zst — the same relationship .tgz has to .tar.gz — and both unwrap to a .tar inside. If you have a plain .tar, see open a .tar online; a single .zst, see open a .zst online; the gzip-flavoured sibling of this format is open a .tar.gz online.
How to open a tar.zst in your browser
No tar --zstd, no flags, no terminal. The browser does the un-zstd and untar in one local step.
- Go to ZipTool and drag the
.tar.zst(or.tzst) onto the page (or use the file picker, or paste a URL). - The file tree opens on the left, with the archive's folder structure intact. Expand folders and search to jump to any entry.
- Click a file to preview it inline, or use extract-all to write everything to a folder (Chrome/Edge) or download it as a bundle (Firefox/Safari).
- The flagship use: Arch Linux ships its repository packages as
.pkg.tar.zst— drop one on the page to see exactly which files a package installs (and read any of them) before it touches your system.
Honest limits
A browser-based tar.zst reader is genuinely useful, with a couple of boundaries.
- Other compressors are supported on their own pages. ZipTool decodes zstd (this page), gzip (`.tar.gz`), xz (`.tar.xz`), and bzip2 (`.tar.bz2`) natively. LZ4 is not handled; use the command line or a desktop tool for that.
- Extract-to-folder needs Chrome or Edge. Writing a real directory tree uses the File System Access API, absent in Firefox and Safari; there you download the contents as a zip instead.
- Unix permissions are not restored on extraction. tar records file permissions and timestamps; the browser extractor writes the file contents and folder structure but does not faithfully replay Unix mode bits the way
tar --zstd -xfwould. - zst is a source, never a target. The converter repacks a
.tar.zstas ZIP, TAR, or TAR.GZ — it never writes.zstoutput. Large tarballs are also one stream, so unpacking a very large one can be memory-heavy in a browser tab.
Frequently asked questions
How do I open a .tar.zst file online?
Open the page and drop your .tar.zst (or .tzst) onto it. ZipTool decodes the zstd stream and untars the bundle in your browser — no terminal, no install, no upload. The file tree appears, and you can browse, search, preview, and extract the contents.
Can I extract a tar.zst without the command line?
Yes. ZipTool decodes a .tar.zst entirely in your browser with no install — drop the file on the page and use extract-all to write the files to a folder (Chrome/Edge) or download them as a bundle (Firefox/Safari).
What is a .tzst file?
.tzst is the short spelling of .tar.zst — the same relationship .tgz has to .tar.gz. Both names hold a tar bundle compressed with zstd, and both unwrap to a .tar. ZipTool opens them identically; it also recognizes a bare .zst (a single compressed file, not a folder) via open a .zst online.
Why does Arch Linux use .pkg.tar.zst packages?
Arch switched its repository packages from .pkg.tar.xz to .pkg.tar.zst at the end of 2019: zstd decompresses much faster than xz at a similar compression ratio, so package installs and updates unpack quicker, and its tunable levels let the distribution pick the speed/size trade-off. A .pkg.tar.zst opens here like any other tar.zst — useful for auditing what a package contains before installing it.
Do you upload my tar.zst?
No. The archive is decompressed entirely in your browser; your contents are never sent to a server, never stored, and never handed to a third party. Confirm it in DevTools — the Network tab shows no upload — and by disconnecting from the internet after the page loads: browsing and previewing keep working.