File identification software

Software that automates the process of Identifying Files.


 * Apache Tika (cross-platform, open source, website): "The Apache Tika™ toolkit detects and extracts metadata and structured text content from various documents using existing parser libraries." Written in Java.
 * Detect It Easy (website)
 * DROID (cross-platform, open source, website): "DROID is a software tool developed by The National Archives [of the United Kingdom] to perform automated batch identification of file formats." Requires Java 7 or 8 (Version 6.1.5).
 * FIDO (cross-platform, open source) website: Format Identification for Digital Objects, written in Python.
 * FIDOO (web-based online file identification): website
 * File command (various implementations): a standard Unix command, found on almost all Unix and Unix-like (i.e., Linux) systems. See the Debian man page for an overview, and this guide to creating "magic" entries for it.
 * File Information Tool Set: software from the Harvard University library to identify file formats and extract metadata
 * FI Tools (Windows, commercial, website)
 * G-Spot (Windows, freeware, website): Identifies audio and video codecs need to play a media file.
 * IDArc
 * JHOVE (tool to classify/identify/validate file formats)
 * Konvertor (tool to display and convert between 4000+ different formats, freeware website)
 * MediaInfo (cross-platform, open source, website): "MediaInfo is a convenient unified display of the most relevant technical and tag data for video and audio files."
 * PHP PRONOM drip: Recognize file formats using PRONOM registry (open source, website)
 * Siegfried (signature-based file identification tool): website · blog post · PRONOM:
 * TrID (Windows/Linux, free for non-commercial use, website): identifies files using a database of filetype signatures. Also has an online version.