Reference Source

337 records

What format is this file, judged by the bytes it starts with?

337 records covering 336 hex signatures, one fact each. Every value is transcribed from the source that states it and carries the sentence it was taken from: 1 source across 1 site, last checked 2026-09-22, due for re-check by 2027-09-22. Every record is listed below, each linking the page its value came from.

Records337
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LicenceCC BY-SA 4.0 (source: Wikipedia)

About this data

The leading bytes (magic number / file signature) that identify a file format, with its usual extension. Answers 'what actually is this file' when the extension is wrong or missing. Covers what Wikipedia's List of file signatures publishes — a broad cross-section, not every format that exists.

The data

Hex signatureOffsetExtensionFormat
000PIC PIF SEA YTRIBM Storyboard bitmap file Windows Program Information File Mac Stuffit Self-Extracting Archive IRIS OCR data file
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0011PDBPalmPilot Database/Document File
00 00 00 0C 4A 58 4C 20 0D 0A 87 0A0jxlImage encoded in the JPEG XL format
00 00 00 0C 6A 50 20 20 0D 0A 87 0A0jp2 j2k jpf jpm jpg2 j2c jpc jpx mj2JPEG 2000 format
00 00 00 3C 00 00 00 3F 00 00 00 78 00 00 00 6D 00 00 00 6C 00 00 00 200 after BOMxml (UTF-32BE)eXtensible Markup Language
00 00 00 18 66 74 79 70 68 65 69 63 00 00 00 000heifApple HEIF image file
00 00 01 000icoComputer icon encoded in ICO file format
00 00 1A 00 00 10 04 00 00 00 00 000wk3Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet (v3) file
00 00 1A 00 02 10 04 00 00 00 00 000wk4 wk5Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet (v4, v5) file
00 00 1A 00 05 10 040123Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet (v9) file
00 00 01 B30mpg mpegMPEG-1 video and MPEG-2 video (MPEG-1 Part 2 and MPEG-2 Part 2)
00 00 01 BA0m2p vob mpg mpegMPEG Program Stream (MPEG-1 Part 1 (essentially identical) and MPEG-2 Part 1)
00 00 02 00 06 04 06 00 08 00 00 00 00 000wk1Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet (v1) file
00 00 03 F30Amiga Hunk executable file
00 00 49 49 58 50 52 (little-endian) 00 00 4D 4D 58 50 52 (big-endian)0qxdQuark Express document
00 00 FE FF0txt othersUTF-32BE byte order mark for text
00 01 00 000Palm Desktop Data File (Access format)
00 01 00 00 000ttf tte dfontTrueType font
00 01 00 00 4D 53 49 53 41 4D 20 44 61 74 61 62 61 73 650mnyMicrosoft Money file
00 01 00 00 53 74 61 6E 64 61 72 64 20 4A 65 74 20 44 420mdbMicrosoft Access Database
00 01 00 00 53 74 61 6E 64 61 72 64 20 41 43 45 20 44 420accdbMicrosoft Access 2007 Database
00 01 42 440DBAPalm Desktop To Do Archive
00 01 44 540TDAPalm Desktop Calendar Archive
00 3C 00 3F 00 78 00 6D 00 6C 00 200 after BOMxml (UTF-16BE)eXtensible Markup Language
00 61 73 6D0wasmWebAssembly binary format
0A 0D 0D 0A0pcapngPCAP Next Generation Dump File Format
0A 16 6F 72 67 2E 62 69 74 63 6F 69 6E 2E 70 720walletMultiBit Bitcoin wallet file
0D 44 4F 430docDeskMate Document file
0D F0 1D C00cdbMikroTik WinBox Connection Database (Address Book)
0E 03 13 010hdf4 h4Data stored in version 4 of the Hierarchical Data Format.
0E 4E 65 72 6F 49 53 4F0nriNero CD Compilation
0E 57 4B 530wksDeskMate Worksheet
0E FE FF0txt othersSCSU byte order mark for text
0F 53 49 42 45 4C 49 55 530sibSibelius Music - Score file
1a 080arcARC archive file
1A 45 DF A30mkv mka mks mk3d webmMatroska media container, including WebM
1B 4C 75 610luacLua bytecode
1F 8B0gz tar.gzGZIP compressed file
1F 9D0z tar.zcompressed file (often tar zip) using Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm
1F A00z tar.zCompressed file (often tar zip) using LZH algorithm
01 FF 02 04 03 020drwMicrografx vector graphic file
02 00 5a 57 52 54 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 000cwkClaris Works word processing doc
02 64 73 730dssDigital Speech Standard (Olympus, Grundig, & Phillips) v2
2A 2A 41 43 45 2A 2A7aceACE (compressed file format) [ citation needed ]
2B 2F 76 38 2B 2F 76 39 2B 2F 76 2B 2B 2F 76 2F0UTF-7 byte order mark for text
2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 42 45 47 49 4E 20 4F 50 45 4E 53 53 48 20 50 52 49 56 41 54 45 20 4B 45 59 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D0OpenSSH private key file
2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 42 45 47 49 4E 20 43 45 52 54 49 46 49 43 41 54 45 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D0crt pemPEM encoded X.509 certificate
2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 42 45 47 49 4E 20 50 52 49 56 41 54 45 20 4B 45 59 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D0key pemPEM encoded X.509 PKCS#8 private key
2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 42 45 47 49 4E 20 53 53 48 32 20 4B 45 59 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D0pubOpenSSH public key file
2D 3D 3D 2D 2D 3D 3D 2D 2D 3D 3D 2D 2D 3D 3D 2D0utocUnreal Engine Table of Contents file
2D 6C 68 30 2D2lzhLempel Ziv Huffman archive file Method 0 (No compression)
2D 6C 68 35 2D2lzhLempel Ziv Huffman archive file Method 5 (8 KiB sliding window)
2E 73 6E 640au sndAu audio file format
2F 2A 20 58 50 4D 20 2A 2F0xpmX PixMap
03 00 00 00 41 50 50 520adxApproach index file
03 64 73 730dssDigital Speech Standard (Olympus, Grundig, & Phillips) v3
3A 29 0A0smlSmile file
3a 42 61 73 65 200cntWindows 3.x - Windows 95 Help Contents
3C 00 00 00 3F 00 00 00 78 00 00 00 6D 00 00 00 6C 00 00 00 20 00 00 000 after BOMxml (UTF-32LE)eXtensible Markup Language
3C 00 3F 00 78 00 6D 00 6C 00 200 after BOMxml (UTF-16LE)eXtensible Markup Language
3C 3F 78 6D 6C 200 after BOMxml (UTF-8 or other 8-bit encodings)eXtensible Markup Language
3C 72 6F 62 6C 6F 78 210rbxlRoblox place file
3F 5F0hlpWindows 3.x/95/98 Help file
04 22 4D 180lz4LZ4 Frame Format [62] Remark: LZ4 block format does not offer any magic bytes.
4A 6F 79 210Preferred Executable Format
4B 43 4D 530icmICC profile
4B 44 4D0vmdkVMDK files
4B 50 4B 410pakCapcom RE Engine game data archives
4B 57 41 4A0??_Windows 3.1x Compressed File
4C 5A 49 500lzlzip compressed file
4C 6F A7 94 93 400 after BOMxml (EBCDIC)eXtensible Markup Language
4C 50 4B 53 48 48 52 480journaljournald log file
4C 66 4C 650evtWindows Event Viewer file format
4D 3C B2 A1 (little-endian)0pcapLibpcap File Format (nanosecond-resolution)
4D 4C 56 490MLVMagic Lantern Video file
4D 4D 00 2A (big-endian)0tif tiffTagged Image File Format (TIFF)
4D 4D 00 2B (big-endian)0tif tiffBigTIFF
4D 5A0exe dll mui sys scr cpl ocx ax iec ime rs tsp fon efiDOS MZ executable and its descendants (including NE and PE)
4D 49 4C 200stg"SEAN : Session Analysis" Training file. Also used in compatible software "Rpw : Rowperfect for Windows" and "RP3W : ROWPERFECT3 for Windows".
4D 53 43 460cabMicrosoft Cabinet file
4D 53 48 7C 42 53 48 7C0hl7Health Level Seven (HL7) Standard for electronic data exchange
4D 53 57 49 4D 00 00 00 D0 00 00 00 000wim swm esdWindows Imaging Format file
4D 54 68 640mid midiMIDI sound file
4E 45 53 1A0nesNintendo Entertainment System ROM file
4E 55 52 55 49 4D 47 4E 55 52 55 50 41 4C0nui nupnuru ASCII/ANSI image and palette files
4F 41 52 ??0oarOAR file archive format, where ?? is the format version.
4F 52 430orcApache ORC (Optimized Row Columnar) file format
4F 54 54 4F0otfOpenType font
4F 62 6A 010avroApache Avro binary file format
4F 67 67 530ogg oga ogvOgg, an open source media container format
05 07 00 00 42 4F 42 4F 05 07 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 010cwkAppleWorks 5 document
5A 4D0exeDOS ZM executable and its descendants (rare)
5A 4F 4F0zooZoo (file format)
5B 5A 6F 6E 65 54 72 61 6E 73 66 65 72 5D0IdentifierMicrosoft Zone Identifier for URL Security Zones
06 0E 2B 34 02 05 01 01 0D 01 02 01 01 020-65535 (run-in)mxfMaterial Exchange Format file
06 06 ED F5 D8 1D 46 E5 BD 31 EF E7 FE 74 B7 1D0inddAdobe InDesign document
06 07 E1 00 42 4F 42 4F 06 07 E1 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 010cwkAppleWorks 6 document
6B 6F 6C 79end–512dmgApple Disk Image file
6D 61 69 6E 2E 62 730mgwNintendo Game & Watch image file
6D 64 66 000mM2 Archive, used by game developer M2
6E 2B 31 00344niiSingle file NIfTI format, used extensively in biomedical imaging.
6E 69 31 00344hdrHeader file of a .hdr/.img pair in NIfTI format, used extensively in biomedical imaging.
07 53 4B 460skfSkinCrafter skin file
07 64 74 32 64 64 74 640dtdDesignTools 2D Design file
7B 5C 72 74 66 310rtfRich Text Format
7C 61 8A B20hpapp hpprgm hpsettingsHP Prime graphing calculator file
7F 45 4C 460none, .axf, .bin, .elf, .o, .out, .prx, .puff, .ko, .mod, .soExecutable and Linkable Format
8B 45 52 02 00 00 000toastRoxio Toast disc image file
8C 0A 000ucasUnreal Engine Compressed Asset Storage file
20 02 01 62 A0 1E AB 07 02 00 00 000tdeTableau Datasource
21 2D 31 53 4C 4F 42 1F0slobSlob (sorted list of Object storages) is a read-only, compressed data store with dictionary-like interface
21 3C 61 72 63 68 3E 0A0deblinux deb file
21 3C 73 79 6D 6C 69 6E 6B 3E0Cygwin symlinks
21 42 44 4E0pstMicrosoft Outlook Personal Storage Table file
23 3F 52 41 44 49 41 4E 43 45 0A0hdrRadiance High Dynamic Range image file
23 20 44 69 73 6B 20 44 65 73 63 72 69 70 74 6F0vmdkVMware 4 Virtual Disk description file (split disk)
23 210Script or data to be passed to the program following the shebang (#!)
23 21 41 4D 520amrAdaptive Multi-Rate ACELP (Algebraic Code Excited Linear Prediction) Codec, commonly audio format with GSM cell phones.
23 21 53 49 4C 4B 0A0silAudio compression format developed by Skype
23 25 4D 6F 64 75 6C 650Modulefile for Environment Modules
23 40 7E 5E0vbeVBScript Encoded script
23 45 58 54 4D 33 550m3u m3u8Multimedia playlist
24 53 44 49 30 30 30 310System Deployment Image, a disk image format used by Microsoft
25 21 50 530psPostScript document
25 21 50 53 2D 41 64 6F 62 65 2D 33 2E 30 20 45 50 53 46 2D 33 2E 300eps epsfEncapsulated PostScript file version 3.0
25 21 50 53 2D 41 64 6F 62 65 2D 33 2E 31 20 45 50 53 46 2D 33 2E 300eps epsfEncapsulated PostScript file version 3.1
25 50 44 46 2D0pdfPDF document
27 05 19 560U-Boot / uImage. Das U-Boot Universal Boot Loader.
28 B5 2F FD0zstZstandard compress
30 26 B2 75 8E 66 CF 11 A6 D9 00 AA 00 62 CE 6C0asf wma wmvAdvanced Systems Format
30 37 30 37 30 310cpiocpio "new" ASCII archive file
30 37 30 37 30 320cpiocpio ASCII archive file with crc
30 37 30 37 30 370cpiocpio ASCII archive file
31 30 4C 460flmFL Studio Mobile Project File
34 12 AA 550vpkVPK file, used to store game data for some Source Engine games
37 7A BC AF 27 1C07z7-Zip File Format
37 48 03 02 00 00 00 00 58 35 30 39 4B 45 590kdbKDB file
38 42 50 530psdPhotoshop Document file, Adobe Photoshop's native file format
41 46 460affAdvanced Forensics Format
41 47 44 330fh8FreeHand 8 document
41 52 430arcCapcom MT Framework game data archives
41 53 54 4d 2d 45 35 370e57ASTM E57 3D file format
41 54 26 54 46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 44 4A 560djvu djvDjVu document The following byte is either 55 (U) for single-page or 4D (M) for multi-page documents.
41 72 430arc cdxFreeArc file
42 4C 45 4E 44 45 520blendBlender File Format
42 4D0bmp dibBMP file, a bitmap format used mostly in the Windows world
42 5A 680bz2Compressed file using Bzip2 algorithm
42 41 43 4B 4D 49 4B 45 44 49 53 4B0bacAmiBack Amiga Backup data file
42 50 47 FB0bpgBetter Portable Graphics format
42 53 44 49 46 46 34 300bsdiff binary patch
43 5A 50 580czxCzip X encrypted archive (v4.x)
43 36 34 20 43 41 52 54 52 49 44 47 45 20 20 200crtCommodore 64 cartridge image
43 36 34 20 74 61 70 65 20 69 6D 61 67 65 20 66 69 6C 650t64Commodore 64 tape image
43 36 34 46 69 6C 65 000P00 (P01, P02,...)Commodore 64 binary file (source: *.P00 format for Power64 emulator)
43 44 30 30 310x5EAC9cdiCD-i CD image file
43 44 30 30 310x8001 0x8801 0x9001isoISO9660 CD/DVD image file
43 50 43 480pchClang pre-compiled header
43 57 530swfAdobe Flash .swf
43 72 32 340crxGoogle Chrome extension [48] or packaged app
43 72 65 61 74 69 76 65 20 56 6F 69 63 65 20 46 69 6C 65 1A 1A 000vocCreative Voice file
44 41 410daaDirect Access Archive PowerISO
44 43 4D 01 50 41 33 30 50 41 33 300Windows Update Binary Delta Compression file
44 49 43 4D128dcmDICOM Medical File Format
44 52 41 43 4F0drc3D model compressed with Google Draco
44 55 43 4B8DuckDB database file (source: Source code)
45 4D 55 330ez3 isoEmulator III synth samples
45 4D 58 320ez2Emulator Emaxsynth samples
45 6C 66 46 69 6C 650evtxWindows Event Viewer XML file format
45 52 02 00 00 000toastRoxio Toast disc image file
45 56 460e01EnCase EWF version 1 format
45 56 46 320Ex01EnCase EWF version 2 format
46 4C 49 460flifFree Lossless Image Format
46 4C 560flvFlash Video file
46 4C 68 640flpFL Studio Project File
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 38 53 56 580 any8svx 8sv svx snd iffIFF 8-Bit Sampled Voice
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 41 4E 42 4D0 anyanbm iffIFF Animated Bitmap
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 41 4E 49 4D0 anyanim iffIFF CEL Animation
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 41 43 42 4D0 anyacbm iffAmiga Contiguous Bitmap
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 41 49 46 460 anyaiff aif aifc snd iffAudio Interchange File Format
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 43 4D 55 530 anycmus mus iffIFF Musical Score
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 46 41 4E 540 anyiffAmiga Fantavision Movie
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 46 41 58 580 anyfaxx fax iffIFF Facsimile Image
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 46 54 58 540 anyftxt iffIFF Formatted Text
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 49 4C 42 4D0 anyilbm lbm ibm iffIFF Interleaved Bitmap Image
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 53 4D 55 530 anysmus smu mus iffIFF Simple Musical Score
46 4F 52 4D ?? ?? ?? ?? 59 55 56 4E0 anyyuvn yuv iffIFF YUV Image
46 57 530swfAdobe Flash .swf
470 0xBC 0x178 ... (every 188th byte)ts tsv tsa mpg mpegMPEG Transport Stream (MPEG-2 Part 1)
47 49 46 38 37 61 47 49 46 38 39 610gifImage file encoded in the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)
47 52 49 420grib grib2Gridded data (commonly weather observations or forecasts) in the WMO GRIB or GRIB2 format
47 53 52 2D 31 35 34 310g64Commodore 64 1541 disk image (G64 format)
48 5a 4c 52 00 00 00 180hazelrulesNoodlesoft Hazel
49 4E 44 580idxAmiBack Amiga Backup index file
49 44 330mp3MP3 file with an ID3v2 container
49 49 2A 00 10 00 00 00 43 520cr2Canon RAW Format Version 2 [12] Canon's RAW format is based on TIFF.
49 49 2A 00 (little-endian)0tif tiffTagged Image File Format (TIFF)
49 49 2B 00 (little-endian)0tif tiffBigTIFF
49 53 63 280cabInstallShield CAB Archive File
49 54 53 46 03 00 00 00 60 00 00 000chmMS Windows HtmlHelp Data
49 57 41 440wadinternal WAD (main resource file of Doom)
49 73 5A 210iszCompressed ISO image
50 4B 03 04 50 4B 05 06 (empty archive) 50 4B 07 08 (spanned archive)0zip aar apk docx epub ipa jar kmz maff msix odp ods odt pk3 pk4 pptx usdz vsdx xlsx xpi whlzip file format and formats based on it, such as EPUB, JAR, ODF, OOXML
50 4D 4F 43 43 4D 4F 430datWindows Files And Settings Transfer Repository [53] See also USMT 3.0 (Win XP) [54] and USMT 4.0 (Win 7) [55] User Guides
50 4D 43 430grpWindows 3.x Program Manager Program Group file format
50 31 0A0pbmPortable bitmap ASCII
50 32 0A0pgmPortable Gray Map ASCII
50 33 0A0ppmPortable Pixmap ASCII
50 34 0A0pbmPortable bitmap binary
50 35 0A0pgmPortable Gray Map binary
50 36 0A0ppmPortable Pixmap binary
50 41 52 310Apache Parquet columnar file format
50 57 53 330psafe3Password Gorilla Password Database
50 75 54 54 59 2D 55 73 65 72 2D 4B 65 79 2D 46 69 6C 65 2D 32 3A0ppkPuTTY private key file version 2
50 75 54 54 59 2D 55 73 65 72 2D 4B 65 79 2D 46 69 6C 65 2D 33 3A0ppkPuTTY private key file version 3
51 46 490qcowqcow file format
52 4b 4d 43 32 31 300Vormetric Encryption DPM Version 2.1 Header
52 4E 43 01 52 4E 43 020Compressed file using Rob Northen Compression (version 1 and 2) algorithm
52 41 46 36 340Report Builder file from Digital Metaphors
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 41 43 4F 4E0aniAnimated cursor
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 41 56 49 200aviAudio Video Interleave video format
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 43 44 44 410cda.cda file
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 51 4C 43 4D0qcpQualcomm PureVoice file format
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 52 4d 4d 500mmmMacroMind Multimedia Movie or Microsoft Multimedia Movie
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 56 44 52 4d0vdrVirtualDub
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 57 41 56 450wavWaveform Audio File Format
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 57 45 42 500webpGoogle WebP image file, where ?? ?? ?? ?? is the file size. More information on WebP File Header
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 73 68 62 350shbCorel SHOW! 5.0 background
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 73 68 72 350shrCorel SHOW! 5.0 player
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 73 68 77 340shwCorel SHOW! 4.0
52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 73 68 77 350shwCorel SHOW! 5.0
52 49 46 58 ?? ?? ?? ?? 4D 56 39 33 (big-endian)0dir dxr drxMacromedia Director file format
52 49 46 58 ?? ?? ?? ?? 46 47 44 4D (big-endian)0dcrAdobe Shockwave
52 53 56 4B 44 41 54 410rsQuickZip rs compressed archive
52 59 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 54 52 49 440trdTrID
52 61 72 21 1A 07 000rarRoshal ARchive compressed archive v1.50 onwards
52 61 72 21 1A 07 01 000rarRoshal ARchive compressed archive v5.00 onwards
52 65 63 65 69 76 65 64 3A0emlEmail Message var5 [ citation needed ]
53 4D 53 4E 46 32 30 300sspSmartSniff Packets File
53 5A 44 440??_Windows 9x Compressed File
53 5A 44 44 88 F0 27 330??_Microsoft compressed file in Quantum format, used prior to Windows XP. File can be decompressed using Extract.exe or Expand.exe distributed with earlier versions of Windows. After compression, the last character of the original filename extension is replaced with an underscore, e.g. ‘Setup.exe’ becomes ‘Setup.ex_’.
53 44 50 58 (big-endian format)0dpxSMPTE DPX image
53 45 51 360rcRCFile columnar file format
53 50 30 310binAmazon Kindle Update Package
53 51 4C 69 74 65 20 66 6F 72 6D 61 74 20 33 000sqlitedb sqlite dbSQLite Database
54 41 50 450Microsoft Tape Format
54 44 45 460TDEFTelegram Desktop Encrypted File
54 44 46 240TDF$Telegram Desktop File
55 55 AA AA0pcvPhotoCap Vector
56 49 53 330Resource file Visionaire 3.x Engine
58 46 49 52 ?? ?? ?? ?? 4D 44 47 46 (little-endian)0dcrAdobe Shockwave
58 46 49 52 ?? ?? ?? ?? 33 39 56 4D (little-endian)0dir dxr drxMacromedia Director file format
58 50 44 53 (little-endian format)0dpxSMPTE DPX image
60 EA0arjARJ
62 6F 6F 6B0macOS bookmark format
62 6F 6F 6B 00 00 00 00 6D 61 72 6B 00 00 00 000aliasmacOS file Alias [75] (Symbolic link)
62 70 6C 69 73 740plistBinary Property List file
62 76 78 320lzfseLZFSE - Lempel-Ziv style data compression algorithm using Finite State Entropy coding. OSS by Apple.
63 6F 6E 65 63 74 69 780vhdWindows Virtual PC Virtual Hard Disk file format
64 65 78 0A 30 33 35 000dexDalvik Executable
65 87 78 560p25 obtPhotoCap Object Templates
66 4C 61 430flacFree Lossless Audio Codec
66 74 79 70 4D 53 4E 564mp4MPEG-4 video file
66 74 79 70 33 6743gp 3g23rd Generation Partnership Project 3GPP and 3GPP2 multimedia files
66 74 79 70 63 72 78 43 520cr3
66 74 79 70 68 65 69 63 66 74 79 70 6d4heicHigh Efficiency Image Container (HEIC)
66 74 79 70 69 73 6F 6D4mp4ISO Base Media file (MPEG-4)
67 6C 54 460glbBinary glTF file
67 69 6D 70 20 78 63 660xcfXCF (file format)
69 63 6e 730icnsApple Icon Image format
70 77 72 64 61 74 610pwrdataSAP Power Monitor (version 1.1.0 and higher) data file
71 6F 69 660qoiQOI - The “Quite OK Image Format”
72 65 67 660dat hivWindows Registry file
73 64 62 668sdbWindows customized database
74 6F 78 330toxOpen source portable voxel file
75 73 74 61 72 00 30 30 75 73 74 61 72 20 20 00257tartar archive
76 2F 31 010exrOpenEXR image
76 68 64 78 66 69 6C 650vhdxWindows Virtual PC Windows 8 Virtual Hard Disk file format
77 4F 46 320woff2WOFF File Format 2.0
77 4F 46 460woffWOFF File Format 1.0
78 010zlibNo Compression (no preset dictionary)
78 5E0zlibBest speed (no preset dictionary)
78 7D0zlibBest speed (with preset dictionary)
78 9C0zlibDefault Compression (no preset dictionary)
78 200zlibNo Compression (with preset dictionary)
78 56 340pbt pdt pea peb pet pgt pict pjt pkt pmtPhotoCap Template
78 61 72 210xareXtensible ARchive format
78 BB0zlibDefault Compression (with preset dictionary)
78 DA0zlibBest Compression (no preset dictionary)
78 F90zlibBest Compression (with preset dictionary)
80 2A 5F D70cinKodak Cineon image
85 ?? ?? 030pgpPGP file
89 48 44 46 0D 0A 1A 0A0, 512, 1024, 2048, ...hdf5 h5Data stored in version 5 of the Hierarchical Data Format.
89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A0pngImage encoded in the Portable Network Graphics format
A0 32 41 A0 A0 A00x165A4d64Commodore 64 1541 disk image (D64 format)
A0 33 44 A0 A00x61819d81Commodore 64 1581 disk image (D81 format)
A1 B2 3C 4D (big-endian)0pcapLibpcap File Format (nanosecond-resolution)
A1 B2 C3 D4 (big-endian)0pcapLibpcap File Format
aa aa aa aa0sysCrowdstrike Channel File
AC ED0Serialized Java Data
2d 2d 2d 2d 2d 42 45 47 49 4e 20 50 47 50 20 50 55 42 4c 49 43 20 4b 45 49 20 42 4c 4f 43 4b 2d 2d 2d 2d 2d0ascArmored PGP public key
BE BA FE CA0DBAPalm Desktop Calendar Archive
C0 3B 39 980Linux EXT3/EXT4 jbd2 filesystem Journal
C90comCP/M 3 and higher with overlays
CA FE BA BE0classJava class file, Mach-O Fat Binary
CE FA ED FE0Mach-O binary (reverse byte ordering scheme, 32-bit)
CF 84 010lepLepton compressed JPEG image
CF FA ED FE0Mach-O binary (reverse byte ordering scheme, 64-bit)
2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 42 45 47 49 4E 20 43 45 52 54 49 46 49 43 41 54 45 20 52 45 51 55 45 53 54 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D0csr pemPEM encoded X.509 Certificate Signing Request
D0 4F 50 530plInterleaf PrinterLeaf / WorldView document format (now Broadvision QuickSilver)
D0 CF 11 E0 A1 B1 1A E10doc xls ppt msi msgCompound File Binary Format, a container format defined by Microsoft COM. It can contain the equivalent of files and directories. It is used by Windows Installer and for documents in older versions of Microsoft Office. [44] It can be used by other programs as well that rely on the COM and OLE API's. (0xD0CF11E0 visually resembles "DOCFILE". [45])
D4 C3 B2 A1 (little-endian)0pcapLibpcap File Format
D7 CD C6 9A0wmfWindows Metafile
DB 0A CE 000OpenGL Iris Perfomer .PFB (Performer Fast Binary)
DD 73 66 730UTF-EBCDIC byte order mark for text
23 20 4D 69 63 72 6F 73 6F 66 74 20 44 65 76 65 6C 6F 70 65 72 20 53 74 75 64 69 6F0dspMicrosoft Developer Studio project file
E0 01 00 EA0Ion (serialization format) binary encoding
ED AB EE DB0rpmRedHat Package Manager (RPM) package
EF BB BF0txt othersUTF-8 byte order mark, commonly seen in text files.
FD 37 7A 58 5A 000xz tar.xzXZ compression utility using LZMA2 compression
FE ED FA CE0 0x1000Mach-O binary (32-bit)
FE ED FA CF0 0x1000Mach-O binary (64-bit)
FE ED FE ED0JKS Javakey Store
FE FF0txt othersUTF-16BE byte order mark, commonly seen in text files.
FF 0A0jxlImage encoded in the JPEG XL format
FF 4F FF 510jp2 j2k jpf jpm jpg2 j2c jpc jpx mj2JPEG 2000 format
FF D8 FF DB0jpg jpegJPEG raw or in the JFIF or Exif file format
FF D8 FF E00jpgJPEG raw or in the JFIF or Exif file format
FF D8 FF E0 00 10 4A 46 49 46 00 010jpg jpegJPEG raw or in the JFIF or Exif file format
FF D8 FF E1 ?? ?? 45 78 69 66 00 000jpg jpegJPEG raw or in the JFIF or Exif file format
FF D8 FF EE0jpg jpegJPEG raw or in the JFIF or Exif file format
FF FB FF F3 FF F20mp3MPEG-1 Layer 3 file without an ID3 tag or with an ID3v1 tag (which is appended at the end of the file)
FF FE0txt othersUTF-16LE byte order mark, commonly seen in text files.
FF FE 00 000txt othersUTF-32LE byte order mark for text
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 540fitsFlexible Image Transport System (FITS)
2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 42 45 47 49 4E 20 44 53 41 20 50 52 49 56 41 54 45 20 4B 45 59 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D0key pemPEM encoded X.509 PKCS#1 DSA private key
2D 2D 2D 2D 2D 42 45 47 49 4E 20 52 53 41 20 50 52 49 56 41 54 45 20 4B 45 59 2D 2D 2D 2D 2D0key pemPEM encoded X.509 PKCS#1 RSA private key
3C 3C 3C 20 4F 72 61 63 6C 65 20 56 4D 20 56 69 72 74 75 61 6C 42 6F 78 20 44 69 73 6B 20 49 6D 61 67 65 20 3E 3E 3E0vdiVirtualBox Virtual Hard Disk file format

Where this came from

Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 1 source this dataset was assembled from.

Machine-readable

From your own code

Same records, same quotes, without scraping the page: refsource is on PyPI and npm. Each value comes back carrying the URL it was read from and the sentence on that page that states it — .source and .quote sit on the value itself rather than in a side channel, so the checking step is available instead of skipped.

pip install refsource
refsource lookup file-format-signatures extension="PIC PIF SEA YTR"

npx -y refsource lookup file-format-signatures extension="PIC PIF SEA YTR"

Set your AI assistant up to use this

Two files and no account. Put this in .mcp.json at the root of your project — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Codex all read that file — and your assistant can look this dataset up instead of recalling it. The server is remote, keyless and read-only.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "referencesource": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://referencesource.org/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Add to Cursor · or, on the command line: claude mcp add --transport http referencesource https://referencesource.org/mcp --scope project

Then one line in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, so the assistant knows when to reach for it:

When a question needs "File format magic numbers", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `file-format-signatures`) instead of answering from memory — every record it returns carries its source URL and a verbatim quote from that page.

What each tool does, and the servers built over single registers: Connect your AI assistant.

337 records. last verified against source . due for re-check by .

Licence. CC BY-SA 4.0 (source: Wikipedia)