List of file signatures

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

This is a list of file signatures, data used to identify or verify the content of a file. Such signatures are also known as magic numbers.

Many binary file formats are not intended to be read as text. If such a file is accidentally viewed as a text file, its contents will be unintelligible. However, sometimes the file signature can be recognizable when interpreted as text. The column ISO 8859-1 shows how the file signature appears when interpreted as text in the common ISO 8859-1 encoding.

File extension	Description	Offset	ISO 8859-1	Hex signature
PIC PIF SEA YTR	IBM Storyboard bitmap file Windows Program Information File Mac Stuffit Self-Extracting Archive IRIS OCR data file	0	.	00
PDB	PalmPilot Database/Document File	11	........ ........ ........	00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
DBA	Palm Desktop Calendar Archive	0	...	BE BA FE CA
DBA	Palm Desktop To Do Archive	0	...	00 01 42 44
TDA	Palm Desktop Calendar Archive	0	...	00 01 44 54
	Palm Desktop Data File (Access format)	0	...	00 01 00 00
ico	Computer icon encoded in ICO file format[1]	0	....	00 00 01 00
3gp 3g2	3rd Generation Partnership Project 3GPP and 3GPP2 multimedia files	4	ftyp 3g	66 74 79 70 33 67
z tar.z	compressed file (often tar zip) using Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm	0	..	1F 9D
z tar.z	Compressed file (often tar zip) using LZH algorithm	0	..	1F A0
bac	File or tape containing a backup done with AmiBack on an Amiga. It typically is paired with an index file (idx) with the table of contents.	0	BACKMIKE DISK	42 41 43 4B 4D 49 4B 45 44 49 53 4B
bz2	Compressed file using Bzip2 algorithm	0	BZh	42 5A 68
gif	Image file encoded in the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)[2]	0	GIF87a GIF89a	47 49 46 38 37 61 47 49 46 38 39 61
tif tiff	Tagged Image File Format	0	II*. MM.*	49 49 2A 00 (little endian format) 4D 4D 00 2A (big endian format)
cr2	Canon RAW Format Version 2[3] Canon's RAW format is based on the TIFF file format [4]	0	II*..... CR	49 49 2A 00 10 00 00 00 43 52
cin	Kodak Cineon image	0	.*_.	80 2A 5F D7
dpx	SMPTE DPX image	0	SDPX XPDS	53 44 50 58 (big endian format) 58 50 44 53 (little endian format)
exr	OpenEXR image	0	v/1.	76 2F 31 01
bpg	Better Portable Graphics format[5]	0	BPGû	42 50 47 FB
jpg jpeg	JPEG raw or in the JFIF or Exif file format	0	ÿØÿÛ ÿØÿà ..J F IF.. ÿØÿá ..E x if..	FF D8 FF DB FF D8 FF E0 nn nn 4A 46 49 46 00 01 FF D8 FF E1 nn nn 45 78 69 66 00 00
ilbm lbm ibm iff	IFF Interleaved Bitmap Image	0 any	FORM.... ILBM	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 49 4C 42 4D
8svx 8sv svx snd iff	IFF 8-Bit Sampled Voice	0 any	FORM.... 8SVX	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 38 53 56 58
acbm iff	Amiga Contiguous Bitmap	0 any	FORM.... ACBM	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 41 43 42 4D
anbm iff	IFF Animated Bitmap	0 any	FORM.... ANBM	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 41 4E 42 4D
anim iff	IFF CEL Animation	0 any	FORM.... ANIM	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 41 4E 49 4D
faxx fax iff	IFF Facsimile Image	0 any	FORM.... FAXX	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 46 41 58 58
ftxt txt iff	IFF Formatted Text	0 any	FORM.... FTXT	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 46 54 58 54
smus smu mus iff	IFF Simple Musical Score	0 any	FORM.... SMUS	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 53 4D 55 53
cmus mus iff	IFF Musical Score	0 any	FORM.... CMUS	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 43 4D 55 53
yuvn yuv iff	IFF YUV Image	0 any	FORM.... YUVN	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 59 55 56 4E
iff	Amiga Fantavision Movie	0 any	FORM.... FANT	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 46 41 4E 54
aiff aif aifc snd iff	Audio Interchange File Format	0 any	FORM.... AIFF	46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 41 49 46 46
idx	Index file to a file or tape containing a backup done with AmiBack on an Amiga.	0	INDX	49 4E 44 58
exe	DOS MZ executable file format and its descendants (including NE and PE)	0	MZ	4D 5A
zip jar odt ods odp docx xlsx pptx vsdx apk	zip file format and formats based on it, such as JAR, ODF, OOXML	0	PK..	50 4B 03 04 50 4B 05 06 (empty archive) 50 4B 07 08 (spanned archive)
rar	RAR archive version 1.50 onwards[6]	0	Rar!...	52 61 72 21 1A 07 00
rar	RAR archive version 5.0 onwards[7]	0	Rar!....	52 61 72 21 1A 07 01 00
	Executable and Linkable Format	0	.ELF	7F 45 4C 46
png	Image encoded in the Portable Network Graphics format[8]	0	.PNG....	89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A
class	Java class file, Mach-O Fat Binary	0	Êþº¾	CA FE BA BE
	UTF-8 encoded Unicode byte order mark, commonly seen in text files.	0		EF BB BF
	Mach-O binary (32-bit)	0 0x1000	........	FE ED FA CE
	Mach-O binary (64-bit)	0 0x1000	........	FE ED FA CF
	Mach-O binary (reverse byte ordering scheme, 32-bit)[9]	0	........	CE FA ED FE
	Mach-O binary (reverse byte ordering scheme, 64-bit)[9]	0	........	CF FA ED FE
	Byte-order mark for text file encoded in little-endian 16-bit Unicode Transfer Format	0	..	FF FE
	Byte-order mark for text file encoded in little-endian 32-bit Unicode Transfer Format	0	....	FF FE 00 00
ps	PostScript document	0	%!PS	25 21 50 53
pdf	PDF document	0	%PDF	25 50 44 46
asf wma wmv	Advanced Systems Format[10]	0	0&²u.fÏ .¦Ù.ª.bÎl	30 26 B2 75 8E 66 CF 11 A6 D9 00 AA 00 62 CE 6C
	System Deployment Image, a disk image format used by Microsoft	0	$SDI0001	24 53 44 49 30 30 30 31
ogg oga ogv	Ogg, an open source media container format	0	OggS	4F 67 67 53
psd	Photoshop Document file, Adobe Photoshop's native file format	0	8BPS	38 42 50 53
wav	Waveform Audio File Format	0	RIFF.... WAVE	52 49 46 46 nn nn nn nn 57 41 56 45
avi	Audio Video Interleave video format	0	RIFF.... AVI.	52 49 46 46 nn nn nn nn 41 56 49 20
mp3	MPEG-1 Layer 3 file without an ID3 tag or with an ID3v1 tag (which's appended at the end of the file)	0	˙ű	FF FB
mp3	MP3 file with an ID3v2 container	0	ID3	49 44 33
bmp dib	BMP file, a bitmap format used mostly in the Windows world	0	BM	42 4D
iso	ISO9660 CD/DVD image file[11]	0x8001 0x8801 0x9001	CD001	43 44 30 30 31
fits	Flexible Image Transport System (FITS)[12]	0	SIMPLE = T	53 49 4D 50 4C 45 20 20 3D 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 54
flac	Free Lossless Audio Codec[13]	0	fLaC	66 4C 61 43
mid midi	MIDI sound file[14]	0	MThd	4D 54 68 64
doc xls ppt msg	Microsoft Office documents[15]			D0 CF 11 E0 A1 B1 1A E1
dex	Dalvik Executable	0	dex.035.	64 65 78 0A 30 33 35 00
vmdk	VMDK files [16][17]	0	KDM	4B 44 4D
crx	Google Chrome extension[18] or packaged app[19]	0	Cr24	43 72 32 34
fh8	FreeHand 8 document[20][21][22]	0	AGD3	41 47 44 33
cwk	AppleWorks 5 document	0	....BOBO ........ ....	05 07 00 00 42 4F 42 4F 05 07 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01
cwk	AppleWorks 6 document	0	....BOBO ........ ....	06 07 E1 00 42 4F 42 4F 06 07 E1 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01
toast	Roxio Toast disc image file, also some .dmg-files begin with same bytes	0	ER.... ãER....	45 52 02 00 00 00 8B 45 52 02 00 00 00
dmg	Apple Disk Image file	0	x.s.bb`	78 01 73 0D 62 62 60
xar	eXtensible ARchive format[23]	0	xar!	78 61 72 21
dat	Windows Files And Settings Transfer Repository[24] See also USMT 3.0 (Win XP)[25] and USMT 4.0 (Win 7)[26] User Guides	0	PMOCCMOC	50 4D 4F 43 43 4D 4F 43
nes	Nintendo Entertainment System ROM file [27]	0	NES	4E 45 53 1A
tar	tar archive[28]	0x101	ustar.00 ustar .	75 73 74 61 72 00 30 30 75 73 74 61 72 20 20 00
tox	Open source portable voxel file [29]	0	TOX	74 6F 78 33
MLV	Magic Lantern Video file[30]	0	MLVI	4D 4C 56 49
	Windows Update Binary Delta Compression[31]	0	DCM PA30	44 43 4D 01 50 41 33 30
7z	7-Zip File Format	0	7z¼¯'	37 7A BC AF 27 1C
gz tar.gz	GZIP	0	..	1F 8B
lz4	LZ4 Streaming Format[32] Remark: LZ4 compressed data (file) format does not offer any magic bytes.[33]	0	."M.	04 22 4D 18
cab	Microsoft Cabinet file	0	MSCF	4D 53 43 46
flif	Free Lossless Image Format	0	FLIF	46 4C 49 46
mkv mka mks mk3d webm	Matroska media container, including WebM	0	.Eߣ	1A 45 DF A3
djvu djv	DjVu document The following byte is either 55 (U) for single-page or 4D (M) for multi-page documents.	0	AT&TFORM....DJV	41 54 26 54 46 4F 52 4D nn nn nn nn 44 4A 56
File extension	Description	Offset	ISO 8859-1	Hex signature

See also

• List of file formats
• Magic number (programming)

References

1. Icons (at MSDN)
2. GRAPHICS INTERCHANGE FORMAT(sm) Version 89a
3. Computer Knowledge. "File Extension .CR2 Details". filext.com.
4. "Inside the Canon RAW format version 2, understanding .CR2 file format and files produced by Canon EOS Digital Camera". free.fr.
5. Bellard, Fabrice (2015). "BPG Image format".
6. "TechNote.txt: RAR version 4.00 - Technical information". 2010-12-01. The marker block is actually considered as a fixed byte sequence: 0x52 0x61 0x72 0x21 0x1a 0x07 0x00
7. "RAR 5.0 archive format". Retrieved 2013-05-01.
8. "RFC 2083 - PNG (Portable Network Graphics) Specification Version 1.0". ietf.org.
9. "Mac Developer Library". apple.com.
10. "ASF (Advanced Systems Format)".
11. Gary C. Kessler (21 October 2012). "File Signatures Table". Retrieved 28 December 2012.
12. "Flexible Image Transport System (FITS), Version 3.0 - File type signifiers". 2012-09-26. Retrieved 24 January 2013.
13. Josh Coalson. "FLAC — format". Retrieved 4 April 2013. "fLaC", the FLAC stream marker in ASCII, meaning byte 0 of the stream is 0x66, followed by 0x4C 0x61 0x43
14. "File Signature Database: mid File Signatures". filesignatures.net.
16. "What Files Make Up a Virtual Machine?". vmware.com.
17. http://www.vmware.com/app/vmdk/?src=vmdk
18. "CRX Package Format". chrome.com.
19. "CRX Package Format". chrome.com.
20. "[Pythonmac-SIG] Discovering file type". python.org.
21. Tim Fisher. "FH8 File - What It Is & How To Open One". About.com Tech.
22. "Google Groups". google.com.
23. "xarformat - xar - xarchive format - eXtensible ARchiver - Google Project Hosting". google.com. line feed character in |title= at position 13 (help)
24. "Easily Restore Your Computer With File and Settings Transfer Wizard XP (Part 1)". howtogeek.com.
25. "User State Migration Tool 3.0". microsoft.com. Microsoft.
26. "User State Migration Tool 4.0 User's Guide". microsoft.com. Microsoft.
27. "NESRomTool::NES ROM Quickstart". sadistech.com.
28. "GNU tar 1.28: Basic Tar Format". gnu.org.
29. "UVOX Universal Voxel Translator - Man Page". tox.land.
30. "RAW Format v2.0 - Google Sheets". google.com.
31. "Using Binary Delta Compression (BDC) Technology to Update Windows Operating Systems". Microsoft. 10 June 2005. Retrieved 15 March 2015.
32. "LZ4 Streaming format". gw.com.
33. Yann Collet. "RealTime Data Compression". fastcompression.blogspot.de.

External links

• Gary Kessler's list of file signatures
• Online File Signature Database for Forensic Practitioners, a private compilation free to Law Enforcement
• Man page for compress, uncompress, and zcat on SCO Open Server
• Public Database of File Signatures
• Complete list of magic numbers with sample files