Extract text from Internet location files (INETLOC)
To convert INETLOC shortcuts to another format, you need Safari or other Web software.
To convert other file formats to the "macOS Internet Shortcut" file type, you need software like Safari or a similar tool.
The .inetloc file is an Internet Location shortcut used by macOS to store URLs, FTP addresses, or other network protocols. Users typically create these files by dragging an address from Safari or another Mac browser directly to the desktop or Finder.
While convenient on Apple devices, the .inetloc format poses immediate problems for cross-platform sharing. It is a proprietary Apple system file. If you send an .inetloc file to a Windows, Linux, or Android user, they will not be able to open it natively. Windows relies on standard URL files, making the macOS shortcut practically useless on a PC. Trying to double-click it usually results in an 'unknown file format' error.
To make the link accessible on other operating systems, you must convert the .inetloc file. The best target formats are a Windows URL shortcut, an HTML bookmark file, or a plain TXT file to extract the raw web address. Note that converting this file only preserves the navigational link; it does not download the actual webpage content.
Because it is a system-specific shortcut, standard online document converters often fail to process it. However, under the hood, an .inetloc file is usually structured as an Apple Property List (plist) in plain XML.
Convert.Guru analyzes your INETLOC file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted PDF, TEXTCLIPPING, CID, WEBLOC, BLOB, ZIP, DS_STORE, CRDOWNLOAD, DOWNLOAD, WEBARCHIVE and BINARYCOOKIES files.
If you want to convert INETLOC file to TMP, TEMP, CACHE, LOG, BAK, OLD, NEW, PART, DOWNLOAD, CRDOWNLOAD, LOCK or PID, you can use Safari or similar software from the "Web Shortcut Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DEVICE, CACHE, SOCK, SYMLINK, PID, MOUNT, FIFO, LOG, PIPE, TMP, JUNCTION or TEMP files to INETLOC, try Safari or another comparable tool in the "Web Shortcut Storage" category.
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 INETLOC converter.