Browse all MIME types

application/gzip

Gzip wraps compressed payloads for archives and transfer pipelines, making it common in download bundles and server-side asset packaging.

application
Usually already encoded

Content-Type header

Content-Type: application/gzip
Common extensions
.gz

How teams usually encounter it

This page maps the media type to the file extensions and delivery behaviors developers usually care about: browser parsing, upload validation, cache correctness, and asset handling.

Compression signal

application/gzip is usually already compressed or stored in a binary-heavy format, so extra transfer compression tends to help less.

Server config snippets

Use these when a server is missing the right extension-to-MIME mapping or you want the expected header to survive a proxy, CDN, or custom asset bucket setup.

Nginx
types {
  application/gzip gz;
}
Apache
AddType application/gzip .gz

Magic bytes / file signature

When you need to validate uploads or investigate a mislabeled file, the signature often starts with 1F 8B.

Operational shortcut

If a browser downloads this asset instead of rendering it correctly, check the response header first, then verify the extension mapping on your origin and edge cache. .gz is the fastest sanity check for teammates reviewing the file outside the app.

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