Extract text from PB files
To convert your PB file to another format, you need Google Protocol Buffers or other Developer software.
To convert other file formats to the "Serialization Format" file type, you need software like Google Protocol Buffers or a similar tool.
A .PB file is most commonly a Google Protocol Buffer (Protobuf) file, a platform-agnostic mechanism for serializing structured data. It is the backbone of high-performance environments, including TensorFlow for storing machine learning models (frozen inference graphs) and GTFS Realtime for tracking public transit data.
While Protobuf is prized for being smaller and faster than XML, its binary nature is a major hurdle for human accessibility. You cannot simply double-click to view the contents; the data is opaque without the corresponding .proto schema definition or a specialized decoder. This makes debugging complex data structures or inspecting neural network weights difficult. Additionally, PureBasic developers use the .PB extension for source code files, which are plain text but require the PureBasic compiler to execute.
For data inspection, the best workflow is converting .PB to JSON or XML, rendering the binary stream into a human-readable text format. For machine learning engineers, converting TensorFlow .PB models to ONNX or TensorFlow Lite (.TFLITE) allows for broader deployment across edge devices and web browsers.
Convert.Guru analyzes your PB file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted PREFERENCES_PB, GOODNOTES, PROTO, PB1, ZIP, ATTACHMENTS, M4S, PBE, TFLITE, KOTLIN_MODULE, DATA-00000-OF-00001, DB and BINARYPB files.
If you want to convert PB file to TB, GB, JS, TS, PY, JAVA, CPP, C, CS, PHP, RB or GO, you can use Google Protocol Buffers or similar software from the "Serialized Structured Data" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert SH, PY, KT, PS1, SWIFT, LUA, PL, JAVA, SCALA, JS, VBS or TS files to PB, try Google Protocol Buffers or another comparable tool in the "Serialized Structured Data" 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 PB converter.