WinZST

WinZST is a Windows archive utility derived from 7-Zip. It focuses on making tar archives and compressed tar archives behave like normal Windows archives.

When a user extracts example.tgz , example.txz , example.tbz , example.tar.zst , or example.tzs , the expected output is the archive contents, not an intermediate .tar file.

WinZST is tarball-first, not Zstandard-only. Zstandard-compressed tarballs are the preferred default, but WinZST also supports other tar workflows such as gzip, bzip2, XZ/LZMA2, GNU tar, and POSIX tar, while keeping broad archive support inherited from 7-Zip.

Compressed tarballs are common, portable, and useful, but Windows archive tools often expose their internal layering in awkward ways.

Tarball with gzip .tgz , .tar.gz Common Unix/Linux tarball format

Tarball with bzip2 .tbz , .tbz2 , .tar.bz2 Older but still common compressed tar format

GNU tar .tar Plain tar archive using GNU tar behavior where supported

POSIX tar .tar Plain tar archive using POSIX tar behavior where supported

Other inherited archive formats may remain supported where licensing, maintenance, and security allow.

A .tzs file is a standard tar archive compressed with Zstandard.

A .tzs archive should remain compatible with standard tar plus Zstandard tooling.