PFTRACE Converter

Extract text from Perfetto performance traces (PFTRACE)


Drop or upload your .PFTRACE file
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How to extract text from your PFTRACE file

  1. Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your PFTRACE file.
  2. You’ll see a preview, if available.
  3. Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.

Convert PFTRACE to another file type

To convert PFTRACE traces to another format, you need Perfetto UI or other Developer software.

Convert a file to PFTRACE

To convert other file formats to the "Performance Trace File" file type, you need software like Perfetto UI or a similar tool.


About PFTRACE files

The .pftrace file is a performance trace data container used for system-wide profiling and debugging. It captures high-frequency metrics from Android devices, Linux systems, and the Chrome web browser. Users typically open and analyze these files using the official web-based Perfetto UI. However, the format presents major usability challenges for standard users. It stores data using dense, proprietary binary Protocol Buffers, making it impossible to read in a standard text editor without dedicated parsing software. Additionally, capturing kernel-level events generates massive amounts of data, often resulting in files exceeding several gigabytes that crash standard browser-based viewing tools. To share or process this data, developers frequently need to convert .pftrace into the legacy Chrome JSON trace format, or extract specific metrics into CSV files. Because it relies entirely on Google's custom binary schema, this file format is exceptionally difficult to open or convert with standard utilities. Often, only the original Google Trace Processor engine can properly read or export the structured data. If our analysis detects a supported underlying or embedded format, partial viewing or extraction may still be successful.

Convert.Guru analyzes your PFTRACE file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.

Users also converted GZ, PERFETTO-TRACE and CTRACE files.


FAQ

If you want to convert PFTRACE file to , you can use Perfetto UI or similar software from the "System Performance Tracing Data" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….

To convert files to PFTRACE, try Perfetto UI or another comparable tool in the "System Performance Tracing Data" category.



The PFTRACE 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 PFTRACE converter.