Extract text from TAG files
To convert your TAG file to another format, you need Zoom or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Temporary Data Container" file type, you need software like Zoom or a similar tool.
The .TAG extension serves multiple technical roles, but users most frequently encounter it as a Temporary Meeting Recording generated by Zoom. These files are essentially raw video and audio data streams created while a meeting is in session. Typically, Zoom automatically converts these to standard MP4 or M4A files once the meeting ends. However, if the conversion process is interrupted (e.g., unexpected shutdown, disk space issues), users are left with orphaned .TAG files that media players like VLC cannot play. This proprietary lock-in forces users to manually locate the Zoom transcoding utility to recover their video.
Beyond video, .TAG is widely used for metadata and system markers. A common variant is the CACHEDIR.TAG file, a standard text-based marker defined by the Cache Directory Tagging Specification. When present in a folder, it instructs backup software and indexers to ignore that directory, preventing unnecessary archiving of temporary data. Other variations include NFC MIFARE data dumps (binary data from RFID tags), InstallShield installation metadata, and HMI (Human Machine Interface) database tags used in industrial automation.
Due to this ambiguity, opening a .TAG file without knowing its origin often results in garbled text or binary errors. For Zoom files, the only viable conversion target is MP4 (video) or M4A (audio) using the proprietary transcoder. For CACHEDIR.TAG and configuration files, converting to TXT allows for easy editing. For NFC or HMI data, conversion to BIN, CSV, or JSON is often necessary for data analysis in standard tools.
Convert.Guru analyzes your TAG file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted ZOOM, CLI, TGA, MP4, ZMDOWNLOAD, ZVR and ZENC files.
If you want to convert TAG file to MP4, CSV, JSON, XML, YAML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF, DAT or DB, you can use Zoom or similar software from the "Temporary Video Stream" 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 TAG, try Zoom or another comparable tool in the "Temporary Video Stream" 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 TAG converter.