CHL File

What are CHL files and how to open them

Are you having problems opening a CHL file or are you simply curious about its contents? We're here to explain the properties of these files and provide you with software that can open or handle your CHL files.

What is a CHL file?

A .CHL file is a Chile Compressed file.

Chile Compressed File is a lossless archive format produced by the Chile program written by Alexandru Mosoi. It is used for general data compression, shrinking files so that they take less space on disk and are faster to transmit. Chile uses advanced techniques to achieve this compression while preserving the contents exactly.

Compression is achieved through a variant of the Burrows-Wheeler Transform combined with a "word-friendly coder" (WFC). These methods allow Chile to rearrange the input data to expose repeated patterns, then encode those efficiently. The result is a compact binary archive. The Chile program both creates (compresses) files into this format and extracts (decompresses) them back to their original form.

Files begin with a fixed ASCII signature CHL! encoded in hexadecimal as 43 48 4C 21 at offset 0.

How to open CHL files

Important: Different programs may use files with the CHL file extension for different purposes, so unless you are sure which format your CHL file is, you may need to try a few different programs.

While we have not verified the apps ourselves yet, our users have suggested two different CHL openers which you will find listed below.

Last updated: August 31, 2026

Various apps that use files with this extension

These apps are known to open certain types of CHL files. Remember, different programs may use CHL files for different purposes, so you may need to try out a few of them to be able to open your specific file.

Help us help others

File.org helps thousands of users every day, and we would love to hear from you if you have additional information about CHL file formats, example files, or compatible programs. Please use the links below or email us at submit@file.org to discuss further.