7z

File Format
Name	7z
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Archiving 7z
Extension(s)	.7z
MIME Type(s)	application/x-7z-compressed
PRONOM	fmt/484

7z is a file format for archiving and data compression, developed by Igor Pavlov. It is the native format of the 7-Zip archiving application.

Format details

7z supports several compression schemes:

• LZMA (the default for 7-Zip prior to 9.30 alpha)
• LZMA2 (the default for 7-Zip 9.30 alpha +)
• PPMd
• BCJ
• BCJ2
• bzip2
• DEFLATE

Identification

7z files begin with signature bytes '7' 'z' BC AF 27 1C.

Related formats

• S7z
• UFA (predecessor?)
• 777 (predecessor?)
• BIX (predecessor?)
• ARG (same author)

Specifications

• Refer to the DOC/7zFormat.txt file in the source distribution
  • 7zFormat.txt

Software

• 7-Zip
• 7zX for Mac
• p7zip

Sample files

• https://telparia.com/fileFormatSamples/archive/sevenZip/

Links

• 7-Zip page about 7z Format
• Wikipedia article