Files with the two-segment TAR.XZ extension are used to store compressed archives created with the TAR utility. The second part of the extension means that the LZMA2 lossless compression algorithm was used to create such an archive. It is a method that gives a high degree of data compression.

The TAR.XZ format is used in operating systems from the Unix and Linux families. Such a file is a container of LZMA2 compressed streams.