AAC
Advanced Audio Coding
A lossy audio codec designed as the successor to MP3, offering better quality at similar bitrates.
File FormatsAIFF
Audio Interchange File Format
An Apple-developed uncompressed audio format similar to WAV, commonly used in professional audio on macOS.
File FormatsAPNG
Animated Portable Network Graphics
An extension of PNG supporting animated images with full alpha transparency, superior to GIF's 256-color limit.
File FormatsArrow
Apache Arrow
A cross-language columnar memory format for flat and hierarchical data, enabling zero-copy reads for analytics.
File FormatsDOCX
Office Open XML Document
Microsoft Word's default document format using XML files compressed in a ZIP archive.
File FormatsFile Signature
File Signature (Magic Bytes)
The first few bytes of a file identifying its format regardless of extension (e.g. %PDF for PDF, 89 50 4E 47 for PNG).
File FormatsHAR
HTTP Archive Format
A JSON-based format recording HTTP request/response data, used by browser DevTools to export network activity.
File FormatsHEIF
High Efficiency Image File Format
A container format for images and sequences using HEVC compression, adopted by Apple as the default iPhone photo format.
File FormatsOPUS
Opus Audio Codec
A versatile, royalty-free audio codec excelling at both speech and music across a wide range of bitrates.
File FormatsTIFF
Tagged Image File Format
A flexible raster image format supporting multiple color spaces and compression methods, common in publishing and photography.
File FormatsSVG
Scalable Vector Graphics
An XML-based vector image format for two-dimensional graphics, supporting interactivity and animation on the web.
File FormatsEPUB
Electronic Publication
An open standard e-book format using XHTML, CSS, and images packaged in a ZIP container for reflowable content.
File FormatsODF
Open Document Format
An ISO-standardized XML-based file format for office documents (text, spreadsheets, presentations).
File FormatsGIF
Graphics Interchange Format
A bitmap image format supporting up to 256 colors, animation, and lossless compression with LZW algorithm.
File FormatsBMP
Bitmap Image Format
An uncompressed raster graphics format storing color data for each pixel, resulting in large file sizes.
File FormatsWAV
Waveform Audio File Format
A Microsoft/IBM audio format storing uncompressed PCM audio data, used as a standard for audio editing.
File FormatsOGG
Ogg Container Format
A free, open multimedia container format supporting Vorbis audio and Theora video codecs.
File FormatsParquet
Apache Parquet
A columnar storage file format optimized for analytical queries, supporting efficient compression and encoding.
File FormatsProtobuf File
Protocol Buffer File (.proto)
A schema definition file for Protocol Buffers, specifying the structure of serialized binary data messages.
File FormatsTSV
Tab-Separated Values
A plain text format for tabular data where columns are separated by tab characters instead of commas.
File FormatsICO
Icon File Format
A file format for icons on Windows and the web (favicon), containing multiple sizes and color depths in one file.
File FormatsWOFF2
Web Open Font Format 2
A compressed font format for the web using Brotli compression, offering 30% smaller files than WOFF.
File FormatsWASM Binary
WebAssembly Binary Format (.wasm)
The compiled binary format for WebAssembly modules, executed by browser engines at near-native speed.
File FormatsMetadata Stripping
File Metadata Stripping
Removing embedded metadata (EXIF, XMP, IPTC) from files to protect privacy or reduce file size.
File FormatsJXL
JPEG XL
A next-generation image codec offering both lossless and lossy compression with progressive decoding and HDR support.
File FormatsFLIF
Free Lossless Image Format
A lossless image format achieving better compression than PNG, WebP, and BMP, supporting progressive decoding.
File FormatsM4A
MPEG-4 Audio
An audio container format using AAC or ALAC codecs, the default format for Apple Music and iTunes purchases.
File FormatsMKV
Matroska Video Container
A flexible, open video container supporting unlimited video, audio, subtitle, and attachment streams in one file.
File FormatsAVIF Sequence
AVIF Image Sequence
An animated image format using AVIF's AV1 compression, offering dramatically smaller files than GIF or APNG.
File FormatsZstandard
Zstandard (Zstd) Compression
A fast, real-time compression algorithm by Facebook offering a wide range of speed-vs-ratio tradeoffs.
File FormatsBrotli
Brotli Compression
A Google-developed compression format optimized for web content, achieving 15-25% better ratios than gzip.
File FormatsMessagePack
MessagePack Binary Format
A compact binary serialization format similar to JSON but smaller and faster to parse.
File FormatsMIME Sniffing
MIME Type Sniffing
A browser behavior that examines file content to determine its type when the declared MIME type is missing or incorrect.
File FormatsTar
Tape Archive
A Unix file format that bundles multiple files into a single archive without compression, often paired with gzip.
File Formats