Database

JPEG is the most widely used lossy compressed image format, optimized for photographs and complex images with smooth color gradations.

JavaScript Object Notation — lightweight text-based data interchange format used nearly everywhere in web APIs, config files, and data storage.

JPEG XL is a next-generation image format designed as the universal successor to JPEG, offering superior compression, progressive decode, lossless JPEG recompression, HDR support, and royalty-free licensing.

Apple

A document preparation system and typesetting language built on Donald Knuth

Lottie is a JSON-based vector animation format created by Airbnb that renders After Effects animations natively on web, iOS, and Android at tiny file sizes.

HLS is Apple

An MPEG-4 container format for audio, typically holding AAC or Apple Lossless (ALAC) encoded content, widely used in the Apple ecosystem.

A lightweight plain-text markup language that uses intuitive punctuation-based syntax for formatting, widely used for documentation, README files, notes, and web content.

A protocol and file format that stores musical performance data (notes, timing, velocity) rather than audio, enabling instrument control and music composition.

MKV is an open, flexible multimedia container format that can hold virtually any combination of video, audio, subtitle, and metadata tracks in a single file.

Amazon

MOV is Apple

The most widely adopted lossy audio compression format, balancing file size and audio quality for music distribution and playback.

MP4/M4V MPEG-4 container format supporting H.264/H.265 video, AAC audio, and subtitles — the dominant video format on the modern web and in consumer devices.

MPEG-DASH is the ISO-standard adaptive bitrate streaming protocol using MPD manifests and segmented media, widely used for DRM-protected and cross-platform video delivery.

MessagePack binary serialization — a compact, fast binary format that is like JSON but smaller and faster, used for caching, IPC, and network protocols.

MXF is the SMPTE-standardized professional container format for broadcast and post-production, designed for interoperable exchange of video, audio, and metadata between systems.

Newline-Delimited JSON — a text format with one JSON object per line, designed for streaming, logging, and processing large datasets line-by-line.

Apple

The OBJ 3D model format — a simple, human-readable text format for 3D geometry with broad support across modeling, rendering, and game development tools.

The open standard spreadsheet format from the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) family, used by LibreOffice Calc, Apache OpenOffice, and other applications for spreadsheet documents.

The open standard document format from the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) family, used by LibreOffice, Apache OpenOffice, and other applications for word processing documents.

An open-source, royalty-free lossy audio codec in the Ogg container, offering quality comparable to or better than MP3 without patent restrictions.

A modern, open-source, royalty-free audio codec excelling at both speech and music across a wide bitrate range, with ultra-low latency for real-time communication.

The OpenType font format — the modern standard for digital typography, extending TrueType with PostScript outlines, advanced layout features, and cross-platform support.

Apple

Apache Parquet columnar storage format — a highly efficient binary format for analytics workloads, supporting compression and encoding optimizations.

Adobe

PNG is a lossless compressed raster image format with full alpha transparency support, widely used for web graphics, screenshots, and images requiring exact pixel reproduction.

The modern Microsoft PowerPoint presentation format based on Open XML, storing slides, layouts, themes, animations, and media in a ZIP-compressed package of XML files.

Apple ProRes is a family of lossy and visually lossless video codecs designed for high-quality professional video editing, post-production, and broadcast delivery.

Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) — Google

PSD is Adobe Photoshop's native file format, preserving layers, masks, blend modes, adjustment layers, smart objects, and all editing data for non-destructive professional image editing workflows.

QOI (Quite OK Image Format) is a simple, fast lossless image format designed for speed over compression ratio, encoding and decoding images 20-50x faster than PNG with comparable file sizes.

The RAR archive format — proprietary compression with strong encryption, recovery records, and multi-volume splitting for high-ratio archiving.

RAW files contain minimally processed sensor data from digital cameras, preserving maximum detail, dynamic range, and editing flexibility for professional photography workflows.

The RPM package format — Red Hat

A Microsoft-developed text-based document interchange format that encodes formatted text with control words, providing cross-platform rich text exchange without binary complexity.

Structured Query Language files — text files containing database queries for schema definition, data manipulation, migrations, and seed data.

SQLite single-file relational database — a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration SQL database engine stored as a single cross-platform file.

The STEP file format — the ISO standard for exchanging complete CAD product data including 3D geometry, tolerances, materials, and assembly structure across engineering tools.

The STL 3D model format — the standard for 3D printing, representing surface geometry as a mesh of triangles in either ASCII or binary encoding.

SVG is an XML-based vector image format for two-dimensional graphics that scales to any resolution without quality loss, supporting interactivity, animation, and CSS styling.

The TAR archive format — Unix/Linux standard for bundling files while preserving permissions, ownership, and symlinks, typically paired with a compression layer.

TGA (Targa) is a raster image format supporting alpha channels and simple compression, historically important in game development and video production, still used in game asset pipelines.

TIFF is a flexible, high-quality raster image format widely used in professional photography, print production, and scientific imaging, supporting multiple compression methods, color spaces, and high bit depths.

Tom

A plain-text tabular data format using tab characters as field delimiters, avoiding the quoting complexities of CSV and widely used in bioinformatics, linguistics, and data processing.

The TrueType font format — Apple and Microsoft

The simplest document format — unformatted text encoded in character sets like UTF-8, ASCII, or Latin-1, readable by virtually every computing device and application.

The USDZ format — Apple

Variable fonts — a single font file containing a continuous range of styles (weight, width, slant, optical size) controlled by design axes, replacing entire font families.

vCard (.vcf) contact format — the universal standard (RFC 6350) for exchanging electronic business card and contact information between applications.

WebAssembly (Wasm) binary format — a portable, high-performance binary instruction format for running compiled code in browsers and server-side runtimes.

The standard uncompressed audio format for Windows, storing raw PCM audio data with full fidelity for professional editing and archival.

WebM is an open, royalty-free multimedia container format developed by Google for the web, using VP8, VP9, or AV1 video with Vorbis or Opus audio.

WebP is a modern image format developed by Google that provides both lossy and lossless compression with alpha transparency and animation, offering smaller file sizes than JPEG and PNG for web delivery.

Microsoft

WMV is Microsoft