Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your GFA file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert GFA to another file type
To convert GFA files to another format, you need SPAdes or other Data software.
Convert a file to GFA
To convert other file formats to the "Bioinformatics Sequence Graph" file type, you need software like SPAdes or a similar tool.
About GFA files
The .GFA file extension primarily denotes a Graphical Fragment Assembly file. It is a tab-delimited text format heavily used in bioinformatics to represent genome assembly graphs, linking DNA sequence fragments (nodes) and their overlaps (edges). Tools like SPAdes generate these files to handle complex genomic data. Secondarily, .GFA files function as proprietary game resource archives used by HAL Laboratory and Nintendo, legacy source code files for the Atari-era GFA-BASIC language, or 3D animation files for the DAZ 3D aniMate2 plugin. Working with .GFA files presents severe real-world challenges. Bioinformatics graphs frequently exceed several gigabytes, instantly crashing standard text editors like Windows Notepad due to memory limits. The format is highly specialized, meaning researchers cannot interpret the raw connectivity data without dedicated visualization software. Game archive variants are entirely closed-source, locking away internal assets so you cannot natively extract audio or textures on a modern PC. To bypass these limitations, you need to convert your file based on its type. For genomic data, convert to FASTA to extract the raw linear sequences or CSV for tabular analysis. For game archives, target ZIP to unpack the internal directory structure.
Convert.Guru analyzes your GFA file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert GFA file to FASTA, FA or VG, you can use SPAdes or similar software from the "Genome Assembly Graph Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert files to GFA, try SPAdes or another comparable tool in the "Genome Assembly Graph Storage" category.
The GFA 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 GFA converter.