MIME Type Lookup

What this tool does

This is a searchable reference that maps file extensions to their MIME types — and back again. A MIME type (also called a media type or content type) is the short type/subtype label, such as image/png or application/pdf, that tells software what a file actually contains. The tool covers a broad set of common formats across images, documents and office files, audio, video, archives, code and text, fonts, and other application formats. Search runs both ways and entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded.

Why you might need it

MIME types appear wherever files cross a boundary. A web server must send the right Content-Type header or the browser will mishandle the response — downloading a page instead of rendering it, or refusing to play a video. When you build an upload feature you validate against an accept list of MIME types. Email attachments, service-worker caches, fetch responses and content-negotiation headers all depend on them too. Getting the exact string right matters, because a near-miss like text/json instead of application/json simply will not work.

How to use it

1. Type into the Search box. Enter a file extension such as .svg, or a MIME type such as image/svg+xml — the search matches either.
2. Narrow the list with the Category dropdown to focus on images, audio, archives and so on.
3. Browse the matching rows: each shows the extension, the MIME type, a short description and the category.
4. Hover over an extension or a MIME type and click the copy button to put that exact value on your clipboard.

Formats explained

A MIME type has two parts joined by a slash. The first part is the general kind — text, image, audio, video, font or application. The second part names the specific format, sometimes with a structured suffix: +xml means the format is built on XML (as in image/svg+xml), and +json means it is built on JSON (as in application/ld+json). Office formats use long vendor strings under application/vnd. — the .docx type, for instance, is application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document. Those are easy to mistype, which is exactly why copying them from a reference is worthwhile.

Common pitfalls

The most frequent mistake is inventing a plausible-looking type that is not the registered one. JSON is application/json, never text/json; JavaScript served to browsers is text/javascript; a plain .txt file is text/plain. Another trap is treating the extension as authoritative: the MIME type describes the content, so a file renamed from .png to .txt is still image/png by its bytes. Be careful with application/octet-stream as well — it is the correct fallback for genuinely unknown binary data, but using it for a file whose type you do know stops browsers from previewing it.

Tips and advanced use

When you configure a server or a CDN, copy the exact MIME string from here into your Content-Type rules rather than typing it from memory — the vendor strings in particular are unforgiving. For an upload form’s accept attribute you can list several MIME types, and this reference helps you gather the complete set for a format family. Because the whole table is client-side, it loads instantly, works offline once open, and never reports what you searched for to anyone.