---
name: "xzdec"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "xz"
version: "5.8.4-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux", "freebsd"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/xzdec"
---

# xzdec(1)

Small .xz and .lzma decompressors

## NAME

xzdec, lzmadec - Small .xz and .lzma decompressors

## SYNOPSIS

**xzdec** \[*option...*\] \[*file...*\]\
 **lzmadec** \[*option...*\] \[*file...*\]

## DESCRIPTION

**xzdec** is a liblzma-based decompression-only tool for **.xz** (and only **.xz**) files. **xzdec** is intended to work as a drop-in replacement for [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md) in the most common situations where a script has been written to use **xz --decompress --stdout** (and possibly a few other commonly used options) to decompress **.xz** files. **lzmadec** is identical to **xzdec** except that **lzmadec** supports **.lzma** files instead of **.xz** files.

To reduce the size of the executable, **xzdec** doesn't support multithreading or localization, and doesn't read options from **XZ\_DEFAULTS** and **XZ\_OPT** environment variables. **xzdec** doesn't support displaying intermediate progress information: sending **SIGINFO** to **xzdec** does nothing, but sending **SIGUSR1** terminates the process instead of displaying progress information.

## OPTIONS

- **-d**, **--decompress**, **--uncompress**

  Ignored for [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md) compatibility. **xzdec** supports only decompression.

- **-k**, **--keep**

  Ignored for [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md) compatibility. **xzdec** never creates or removes any files.

- **-c**, **--stdout**, **--to-stdout**

  Ignored for [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md) compatibility. **xzdec** always writes the decompressed data to standard output.

- **-q**, **--quiet**

  Specifying this once does nothing since **xzdec** never displays any warnings or notices. Specify this twice to suppress errors.

- **-Q**, **--no-warn**

  Ignored for [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md) compatibility. **xzdec** never uses the exit status 2.

- **-h**, **--help**

  Display a help message and exit successfully.

- **-V**, **--version**

  Display the version number of **xzdec** and liblzma.

## EXIT STATUS

- **0**

  All was good.

- **1**

  An error occurred.

**xzdec** doesn't have any warning messages like [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md) has, thus the exit status 2 is not used by **xzdec**.

## NOTES

Use [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md) instead of **xzdec** or **lzmadec** for normal everyday use. **xzdec** or **lzmadec** are meant only for situations where it is important to have a smaller decompressor than the full-featured [**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md).

**xzdec** and **lzmadec** are not really that small. The size can be reduced further by dropping features from liblzma at compile time, but that shouldn't usually be done for executables distributed in typical non-embedded operating system distributions. If you need a truly small **.xz** decompressor, consider using XZ Embedded.

## SEE ALSO

[**xz**(1)](/xz/1.md)

XZ Embedded: \<https://tukaani.org/xz/embedded.html\>