Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your MGC file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert MGC to another file type
To convert MGC files to another format, you need Unix file command or other Database software.
Convert a file to MGC
To convert other file formats to the "Magic Number Database" file type, you need software like Unix file command or a similar tool.
About MGC files
The .MGC file extension primarily belongs to a Compiled Magic Database used by the Unix and Linux file command. This database stores magic numbers - byte signatures used to identify file types regardless of their extension. In typical use cases, system administrators compile a plaintext magic file into a binary .MGC file to speed up the file command's execution. A secondary, yet common use case for the .MGC extension is the Magic DOSBox emulator, where it acts as a game configuration collection file used to port old DOS games to Android devices. Opening these files directly is difficult because they serve entirely different purposes depending on the source. The Unix .MGC database is a compiled binary. Editing it requires the original uncompiled plaintext file. Standard text editors will only display garbled characters. Conversely, a Magic DOSBox .MGC file is simply a renamed ZIP archive containing configuration scripts and game assets. The primary disadvantage of these formats is their highly specific, system-locked nature. They are not meant for manual editing or cross-platform sharing. Users often seek to convert Unix .MGC files back to TXT to understand the detection rules, but direct decompilation is unsupported. You must locate the source files on your system. For the DOSBox variant, the best conversion target is a standard ZIP file. Renaming the extension allows standard archive tools like 7-Zip to extract the internal configurations. Minor uses of .MGC include legacy Microsoft Office Clip Organizer Media Catalogs and MGCSoft Equation Illustrator files, both of which are closed, proprietary formats. Because an .MGC file can represent a system binary, a compressed game archive, or a legacy Microsoft database, standard online converters fail to process it. Often, only the original software can properly read or export the data. If our analysis detects the supported underlying ZIP format of a DOSBox configuration, viewing or extraction is instantly possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your MGC file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert MGC file to CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT, DB or SQL, you can use Unix file command or similar software from the "System File Identification Database" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to MGC, try Unix file command or another comparable tool in the "System File Identification Database" category.
The MGC 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 MGC converter.