KMZ File: What It Is & How to Open It

Quick facts

Extension

.kmz

Format

KML Zipped Archive

Category

data

MIME type

application/vnd.google-earth.kmz, application/zip

Standard / developer

Open Geospatial Consortium

Open with

Google Earth

What is KMZ?

The OGC KML 2.3 standard requires at least one KML file in a KMZ archive. The main KML file is at the archive root; doc.kml is conventional but not mandatory.

How to open KMZ

Common uses and compatibility

• Package geographic features and their supporting resources for use in an earth browser

Things to check

• A KMZ can reference or contain multiple resource types, so listing the archive is not equivalent to safely rendering every resource.

Advanced inspection

These developer and command-line workflows inspect structure or metadata. They are not the default way most people open the file.

Technical details

Signature

ZIP signatures such as 50 4B 03 04; not unique to KMZ

Encoding

Not applicable

Container

ZIP archive containing a root-level main KML document and optional resources

Compression

ZIP stored or Deflate methods are required minimum support; compression is optional

OGC KML 2.3

Related formats

• ZIP Archive

  KMZ applies KML-specific package rules to a ZIP archive and requires at least one KML document.

• Extensible Markup Language

  The main document inside a KMZ archive is KML, an XML grammar for geographic display data.