📋 MIME Type Reference

Search by file extension or MIME type to find the match. Covers the most common web, image, document, audio, video and archive formats.

Search (extension or MIME type)

How the search matches

The list holds 57 rows covering 56 extensions. Your query is lowercased, one leading dot is stripped, and the remainder is tested as a plain substring against both columns - so it is a contains match, not a lookup:

"zip"  -> .zip   application/zip
          .gz    application/gzip
          .epub  application/epub+zip

That is why image returns every image row and .jpg returns only one. Clear the box and the whole table comes back. A MIME type is always type/subtype; the part before the slash is one of the nine registered top-level types, and a vnd. or x- prefix on the subtype marks it as vendor-specific or unregistered.

Getting the header right

Serve text with a charset. The table gives the type only; for HTML, CSS, JSON and CSV send Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8.
Office formats are long on purpose. A .docx is a zip, but labelling it application/zip makes Word refuse it - use the full vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument string.
Unknown binary is application/octet-stream, which tells the browser to download rather than render.

These are the widely accepted values, not every registered alias. IANA also lists application/javascript for .js and application/yaml for .yaml; the entries shown here are the ones browsers and CDNs actually send.

Frequently asked questions

What is the MIME type for a JSON file?

application/json, with no charset parameter - JSON is defined as UTF-8, so adding one is redundant and some parsers reject it. JSON-LD has its own type, application/ld+json.

Is it text/javascript or application/javascript?

Both work, but the HTML specification now calls text/javascript the correct type for scripts and application/javascript obsolete. Whichever you send, the file must not be served as text/plain or the browser will refuse to run it.

Why does my file download instead of opening in the browser?

Almost always because the server sent application/octet-stream, or a Content-Disposition attachment header. Fix the type on the server; a browser trusts the header over the file extension.