Toolman

.svg — Scalable Vector Graphics

Image image/svg+xml

What a .svg file is

An XML description of shapes rather than a grid of pixels, so it stays perfectly sharp at any size and usually weighs very little.

How to open it

Any browser, plus Illustrator, Inkscape and Figma. It is plain text — you can open it in a code editor.

Worth knowing

Because SVG can contain scripts, never render an uploaded SVG from an untrusted source without sanitising it.

How to identify a .svg file

A file's extension is only its name — renaming a.png to a.svg changes nothing inside. What software actually reads is the magic number, the first few bytes of the file.

Signature3C 3F 78 6D 6C or 3C 73 76 67
MIME typeimage/svg+xml
CategoryImage

Plain text — starts with <?xml or <svg. No binary signature.

# what is this file really?
file mystery.svg

# look at the first bytes yourself
xxd mystery.svg | head -2
head -c 16 mystery.svg | xxd

# Windows PowerShell
Get-Content mystery.svg -AsByteStream -TotalCount 16 | Format-Hex

Converting it

You can convert SVG in your browser without uploading it anywhere: SVG to PNG, SVG to JPG, SVG to WebP.

Frequently asked questions

What is a .svg file?

An XML description of shapes rather than a grid of pixels, so it stays perfectly sharp at any size and usually weighs very little.

How do I open a .svg file?

Any browser, plus Illustrator, Inkscape and Figma. It is plain text — you can open it in a code editor.

Is .svg safe to open?

Usually, but with one caveat: SVG is XML that can contain JavaScript, so an SVG from an untrusted source should be sanitised before being rendered on a web page. Opening one in an image viewer is fine.

Can I change a file's extension to convert it?

No. Renaming changes the label, not the bytes. The one place it appears to work is between formats that genuinely share a container — renaming .docx to .zip works because a DOCX is a ZIP. Everything else needs a real converter.

Other image formats

Other formats

All file formats