Extract text from Master files (MASTER)
To convert MASTER Files to another format, you need Visual Studio or other Developer software.
To convert other file formats to the "Web Template" file type, you need software like Visual Studio or a similar tool.
The .master extension represents a file identity crisis, serving three distinct and unrelated technical ecosystems. Most commonly, it is an ASP.NET Master Page, a server-side template used by Microsoft Visual Studio to define consistent layouts (headers, footers, navbars) across a Web Forms application. These files contain HTML markup mixed with <asp:ContentPlaceHolder> controls and cannot be opened directly in a standard web browser; they require a .NET server to render.
However, you may also encounter .master files as internal system data. On macOS, Apple Mail and Notification Center use them as configuration files (often structured as binary Property Lists or SQLite databases) to track account states. In the development world, Git uses a file simply named master (or with the extension in some GUI logs) to store the reference log (reflog) or branch tip hash.
Because these formats are either proprietary code or binary system data, standard editors often fail to display them meaningfully. Users convert .master files to HTML or TXT to inspect the source code without Visual Studio, or to XML to parse the internal structure of Apple configuration files.
Convert.Guru analyzes your MASTER file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted LT, BTM, DYLIB and PHD files.
If you want to convert MASTER file to PHD, HTML, HTM, CSS, JS, PHP, ASP, ASPX, JSP, JSPX, PY or RB, you can use Visual Studio or similar software from the "Web Page Template" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert RSS, CSS, CGI, SITEMAP, PL, WEBMANIFEST, JSON, JS, XML, HTML, ICO or HTM files to MASTER, try Visual Studio or another comparable tool in the "Web Page Template" 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 MASTER converter.