pigz ☆

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Description:
Parallel gzip

Type: Formula | Tracked Since: Dec 28, 2025

Links: Homepage | formulae.brew.sh

Category: System utilities

Tags: compression gzip parallel utilities archiving

Install: brew install pigz

About:
Pigz, which stands for parallel gzip, is a fully compatible replacement for gzip that uses multiple processors and threads to dramatically speed up compression and decompression. By leveraging parallel computation, it can achieve significant performance gains on modern multi-core systems compared to the standard single-threaded gzip utility. This makes it an ideal tool for processing large files and archives where speed is critical.

Key Features:

Multi-threaded compression and decompression
Fully compatible with standard gzip format and options
High performance on multi-core processors
Drop-in replacement for the gzip command

Use Cases:

Accelerating compression of large datasets, logs, or backups
Speeding up decompression of gzip archives on modern hardware
Parallelizing batch compression jobs in scripts

Alternatives:

gzip – The standard single-threaded utility; pigz is a faster, parallel-compatible alternative.
zstd – Offers a different algorithm with excellent speed/ratio trade-offs, but is not compatible with gzip.

Version History

Detected	Version	Rev	Change	Commit
Sep 16, 2025 11:49am		0	VERSION_BUMP	20c4bc9d