This is a list of file formats often seen on computers.
- Audio file formats
- Lossless
- Lossy
- Music formats
- MID (standard MIDI file; most often just notes and controls but occasionally also sample dumps)
- NSF (bytecode program to play NES music)
- MOD (Soundtracker and Protracker sample and melody modules)
- S3M (ScreamTracker 3 module, with a few more effects and a dedicated volume column)
- XM (FastTracker module, adding instrument envelopes)
- IT (Impulse Tracker module, adding compressed samples, note-release actions, and more effects including a resonant filter)
- Document file formats - These are ways of storing mainly text
- Raster image or graphics file formats
- BMP
- GIF (often avoided because of patent problems)
- MSP (file format used by old versions of Microsoft paint, replaced with bmp in Windows 3.0)
- IFF-ILBM (.ilbm .lbm .iff)
- JNG (single-frame MNG with JPEG data and possibly an alpha channel)
- JPEG JFIF (.jpg or .jpeg) (lossy, recommended for display of photographic images)
- PCX
- PNG (lossless, recommended for display and edition of graphic images)
- PPM
- PSD
- TGA
- TIFF (.tif or .tiff) (usually lossless, many variant exist including lossy one)
- Vector image formats
- Object code file formats
- a.out (Unix and GCC only, not technically a file format)
- ELF
- MZ EXE (.exe; used in MS-DOS)
- PE (.exe; used in Microsoft Windows and some other systems)
- Page description languages
- DVI
- PCL
- PostScript (.ps, .ps.gz)
- Hypertext description
- Data exchange
- Tabulated data
- tab
- csv (comma separated values)
- dif (accessible by many spreadsheet applications)
- Archiving and compression formats
- Video file formats
- AAF (mostly intended to hold edit decisions and rendering information, but can also contain compressed media essence)
- Animated GIF (simple animation; often avoided because of patent problems)
- ASF (ASF is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common)
- AVI (AVI is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-1 and a variant of MPEG-4 are common)
- Macromedia Flash (.swf) (complex vector-based animation with sound and interactivity)
- Matroska (*.mkv) (Matroska is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common)
- MNG (mainly simple animation containing PNG and JPEG objects, often somewhat more complex than animated GIF)
- MPEG
- MXF
- Tarkin (Ogg project)
- Theora (Ogg project)
- OGM (OGM is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common)
- QuickTime (QuickTime is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; Sorenson codec is common)
- RealMedia
- GIS file formats
- DEM (USGS) (US Geo Survey terrestrial elevation data)
- DEM (USGS) (US Geo Survey terrestrial elevation data)
- Disk images (a file system used as a random-access archive file inside another file system; extensions include .img and .iso)
- Native data (registered objective parametrs .dat .cop .par)