.WARC File Extension

Web Archive

Developer International Internet Preservation Consortium
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What is a WARC file?

A WARC file is a web archive, which contains website content saved for archival purposes. Various web archiving programs, such as GNU Wget, use crawlers to retrieve web content and store it in WARC files. WARC files may include HTML data, stylesheets, scripts, images, and other webpage elements.

More Information

Screenshot of a .warc file in Webrecorder Player
WARC file open in Webrecorder Player

The Web ARChive, or WARC, format is an extension of the Internet Archive .ARC format. The primary difference between WARC and ARC files is that WARC files can include metadata about when and how the data they contain was archived (e.g., what program created the archive).

WARC is the standard format in which internet archivists save archived webpages. However, you may encounter web archives saved in other formats, including the ARC and .WACZ formats.

NOTE: WARC files compressed with gzip compression use the .warc.gz extension.

How to open a WARC file

You can open a WARC file with Webrecorder Player (multiplatform) or Webrecorder ReplayWeb.page (Web). Doing so will allow you to view the archived content the WARC file contains.

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Programs that open WARC files

Windows
Webrecorder Player
Free
Mac
Webrecorder Player
Free
Linux
Webrecorder Player
Free
Web
Webrecorder ReplayWeb.page
Free
Category: Web Files
Updated: December 12, 2023

Verified by FileInfo.com

The FileInfo.com team has independently researched the Web Archive file format and Mac, Windows, and Linux apps listed on this page. Our goal is 100% accuracy and we only publish information about file types that we have verified.

If you would like to suggest any additions or updates to this page, please let us know.

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