BL Converter

Extract text from BL files

Select File
Drop or upload your .BL file

Online File Converter

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How to extract text from your BL file

Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your BL file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert BL to another file type

To convert your BL file to another format, you need Switch Toolbox or other Game software.

BL to KL
BL to LPL
BL to TMP
BL to TEMP
BL to CACHE
BL to LOG
BL to BAK
BL to OLD
BL to NEW
BL to PART
BL to DOWNLOAD
BL to CRDOWNLOAD

Convert a file to BL

To convert other file formats to the "Game Data Archive" file type, you need software like Switch Toolbox or a similar tool.

DEVICE to BL
CACHE to BL
SOCK to BL
SYMLINK to BL
PID to BL
MOUNT to BL
FIFO to BL
LOG to BL
PIPE to BL
TMP to BL
JUNCTION to BL
TEMP to BL

About BL files

The .BL extension is a notoriously ambiguous filename used by several completely unrelated industries, creating significant confusion for users. Most commonly (approx. 14%), it serves as a binary resource archive in Nintendo games (often using the SARC format found in titles like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild), containing assets like physics data, models, or text. These files are proprietary and unreadable by standard operating systems, often requiring specialized modding tools like Switch Toolbox to inspect.

Alternatively, a .BL file may be a Bottle Log generated by Sea-Bird Scientific oceanographic instruments (CTD profilers). These files log water sampling data and are critical for scientific analysis but are locked inside a specific format that requires SeaSave V7 to interpret. Another common use (7%) is in PCB manufacturing, where .BL stands for "Bottom Layer" in the Gerber format, typically generated by CAD software like Autodesk EAGLE.

Conversion Best Practices:

For Nintendo Game Files: The goal is extraction. Users typically convert or extraction the archive to a folder structure or ZIP file to access the internal game assets (often XML or image files).
For Sea-Bird Data: Scientists need to convert these logs to CSV or XLSX to analyze the bottle firing sequences in Microsoft Excel.
For PCB Layouts: To review a circuit board design without CAD software, convert the Gerber .BL file to PDF or DXF for easy viewing and sharing.

Convert.Guru analyzes your BL file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted FCB, CB2, SCG, KL and LPL files.

The BL Converter Story

The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our BL converter.