How to open a .BZ2 file online
No extra software to download or install.
Pick your .BZ2 file
Drag it in or click to choose it. We read its contents list first, so it opens right away without unpacking everything.
Browse what's inside
See every file with its size, how much it's compressed and its date, and search by name across all the folders.
Preview or download
Click a file to preview text or images, or save just that one. Need everything? Download it all as a single ZIP.
About .BZ2 files
What a .BZ2 file is, and what's inside it.
A BZ2 file is a single file compressed with the bzip2 tool. On Windows, open it with the free 7-Zip or PeaZip. On macOS, double-click and Archive Utility handles it. On Linux, run bunzip2 file.bz2 or tar -xjf file.tar.bz2. Most BZ2 files you encounter are actually .tar.bz2 archives containing many files inside a TAR layer.
Programs that open .BZ2 files
| Full name | bzip2 Compressed File |
|---|---|
| Developer | Julian Seward (bzip2) |
| First released | 1996 (bzip 0.21); bzip2 1.0 released 2000 |
| Category | Archives |
| MIME type | application/x-bzip2 |
| Signature | 42 5A 68 "BZh" - bzip2 signature (B, Z, h) |
Related viewers
Found something inside the archive? Open it here.
Do I have to unpack the whole .BZ2 file?
No. The viewer reads its table of contents first and only unpacks a file when you click it. That works even with multi-gigabyte archives, because we read just the bytes we need.
Can I open password-protected archives?
Yes, for ZIP (ZipCrypto and AES) and 7Z. You'll be asked for the password,. We can't recover forgotten passwords.
Is my .BZ2 file uploaded anywhere?
No. The code that unpacks the file is downloaded once and then reused.
Why does a .docx or .apk open as an archive?
Because they are ZIP archives under the hood. Office documents, Android apps, Java programs and EPUB books all use ZIP as their container.
What about split archives (.001, .z01, .part1.rar)?
Multi-part archives need all their parts. Today you can open the first part to see the file list; joining parts is on our roadmap.
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