Technical MIME Specification & Web Server Guide

application/x-tar

Technical overview, official IANA specification, header magic bytes, and server configuration snippets for .TAR files (Tape Archive).

File Extension

.tar

Content-Type Header

application/x-tar

Format Category

Description & Usage

POSIX standard archive format used in Unix and Linux operating systems.

HTTP Server Content-Type Configuration Code

# Nginx mime.types configuration for .tar
types {
    application/x-tar    tar;
}

OS Compatibility Matrix

Windows

macOS

Linux

Android

iOS

Want to test header signatures or binary files?

Run binary magic byte inspection in Magic Byte Detector.

Frequently Asked Questions

The official MIME content type for .tar files is "application/x-tar". Web servers use this header to instruct browsers how to render or process .tar data.