Extract text from NBT files
To convert your NBT file to another format, you need Minecraft or other Game software.
To convert other file formats to the "Game Data File" file type, you need software like Minecraft or a similar tool.
The .NBT file format, short for Named Binary Tag, is the backbone of data storage for the wildly popular sandbox game Minecraft. Developed by Mojang Studios, this hierarchical binary format stores complex game data including level.dat files, player inventories, and chunk data in a tree-like structure similar to JSON but optimized for binary compactness.
While efficient for the game engine, .NBT files present a significant barrier for server admins, modders, and curious players: they are not human-readable. Because the files are typically GZIP compressed binary data, attempting to open them in a standard text editor like Notepad++ yields unintelligible garble. To modify game attributes - such as editing player stats, recovering corrupted worlds, or inspecting schematics - users must convert or interpret this data.
For analysis and debugging, the best workflow is to convert .NBT to JSON or XML, rendering the tag structure into readable text. For developers creating external tools, converting to raw uncompressed binary allows for easier parsing.
Convert.Guru analyzes your NBT file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted SCHEMATIC, SCHEM, MCSTRUCTURE, LITEMATIC, ZIP, VSCHEM, JSON, DAT, TXT, NBS, SNBT, MBT and JPG files.
If you want to convert NBT file to SCHEMATIC, MCSTRUCTURE, JSON, SCHEM, OBJ, CSV, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI or CFG, you can use Minecraft or similar software from the "Minecraft Game Data Storage" 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 NBT, try Minecraft or another comparable tool in the "Minecraft Game Data 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 NBT converter.