Format guide
Every format was made for a purpose. Here you’ll find what each one is for, where it works well and when it’s worth converting it.
The choice in brief
- Photos to share
- JPG or WEBP
- Screenshots, logos, transparency
- PNG or SVG
- Documents to send or sign
- Documents to edit
- DOCX or ODT
- Videos for chats and social media
- MP4
- Music and podcasts
- MP3 or M4A
- Tables to import
- CSV
- Many files in one attachment
- ZIP
Images
JPG JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) Photos, pictures to attach to emails and online forms, printing. PNG PNG (Portable Network Graphics) Screenshots, logos, icons, graphics with text, images with a transparent background. WEBP WebP (developed by Google) Websites, online shops, blogs: lighter, faster pages. GIF GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) Short animations, icons and graphics with few colours. BMP BMP (Windows Bitmap) Compatibility with older Windows software and devices that require it. ICO ICO (Windows icon) Website favicons, icons for programs and shortcuts on Windows. TIFF TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) Archive scans, professional printing, exchanging images between graphics programs. AVIF AVIF (AV1 Image File Format) Modern websites that want the biggest weight savings. HEIC HEIC / HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) Storing photos on your phone while using little space. SVG SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) Logos, icons, flat illustrations, charts for the web.
Documents
PDF PDF (Portable Document Format) Documents, forms, scans, collections of photos to send as a single file. DOCX Microsoft Word document (Office Open XML) Letters, reports, theses, documents edited by several people. ODT OpenDocument Text Editable documents in an open format, public offices. RTF Rich Text Format Exchanging formatted text with very different or older programs. TXT Plain text Notes, copying text into other programs, long-term archiving. Markdown Markdown Documentation, notes, READMEs, blog posts. HTML HyperText Markup Language Publishing text on the web, formatted emails, documents to read in the browser.
Video
MP4 MPEG-4 Part 14 Sharing videos anywhere: chats, social media, email, websites. MOV QuickTime Movie (Apple) Editing on a Mac, videos shot on iPhone. MKV Matroska Video Archiving films with several languages and subtitles. WEBM WebM (a Google project) Videos for websites, screen recordings. M4V MPEG-4 Video (Apple variant) Videos bought or exported with Apple apps. TS MPEG Transport Stream TV recordings, streaming segments, camcorders.
Audio
MP3 MPEG-1 Audio Layer III Music, podcasts, ringtones, maximum compatibility. WAV Waveform Audio File Format Audio editing, original recordings, maximum fidelity. OGG Ogg (Xiph.Org) Games, apps, websites, patent-free audio. OPUS Opus Interactive Audio Codec Speech, podcasts, streaming, tiny files. FLAC Free Lossless Audio Codec Music archives, audiophiles, faithful copies of CDs. M4A MPEG-4 Audio Music on Apple devices, voice recordings, good-quality audio in light files. AAC Advanced Audio Coding (ADTS stream) Good-quality audio in light files.
Spreadsheets
XLSX Microsoft Excel workbook Tables, budgets, lists to sort and filter. ODS OpenDocument Spreadsheet Tables in an open format, public administrations. CSV Comma-Separated Values Importing contacts, price lists and orders into business software, online shops and databases. TSV Tab-Separated Values Copying tables between programs, scientific data. JSON JavaScript Object Notation Developers, APIs, imports into databases and apps. XML Extensible Markup Language Exchanging data between programs, imports into business software.