Open a ZPL file

A ZPL file is plain text, so any text editor opens it, but you only see the commands. To see the label, open the file in a ZPL viewer such as the OpenZPL viewer, which draws it and exports it to PDF or PNG, or send it to a ZPL printer.

Aktualisiert am 2026-10-20 · Renders made with the OpenZPL engine

See the label in the browser

1. Open the ZPL viewer.
2. Click Open file and pick the .zpl, .prn or .txt file, or paste its content in the editor.
3. Choose the label size and your printer's density. Carrier labels are usually 4 × 6 in at 203 dpi.
4. Check the preview. Export it as PDF or PNG if you need to send or archive it.

A file with this content opens as the label below:

^XA
^CI28
^FO40,40^A0N,36,36^FDSHIP TO^FS
^FO40,90^A0N,56,56^FDALEX MORGAN^FS
^FO40,160^A0N,34,34^FD1234 East 6th Street^FS
^FO40,205^A0N,34,34^FDAustin, TX 78701^FS
^FO40,270^GB732,3,3^FS
^BY3,3,160
^FO60,310^BCN,160,Y,N,N^FD001048200001^FS
^FO40,560^A0N,28,28^FDOpened from label.zpl^FS
^XZ

If a file has several labels, the viewer shows a pager and the PDF gets one page per label.

Read it as text

Notepad, TextEdit or any code editor shows the commands: lines starting with ^XA, ^FO, ^FD and so on. That's enough to change a value, such as an address in a ^FD field, but not to judge the layout. Save it as plain text; a word processor adds formatting the printer won't understand.

When the file looks like garbage

• Long runs of hexadecimal or :Z64: text are images (^GF), not damage. They render normally.
• Binary characters at the start usually mean the file is a printer driver spool file, not ZPL. Ask the sender for the label as ZPL.
• .prn files can be ZPL, EPL or another printer language. If it starts with ^XA, it's ZPL; see what is ZPL.
• Strange characters instead of accents are an encoding issue; see accented characters.

Print it

A ZPL printer prints the file as it is: copy it to the printer's share, send it to port 9100 over the network, or use the printer vendor's utility. Without a ZPL printer, convert it to PDF and print that on any printer; see print ZPL as PDF.

Open many files from code

To turn a folder of ZPL files into PDFs, call the API for each one:

for f in *.zpl; do
  curl -s https://api.openzpl.com/v1/printers/8dpmm/labels/4x6/ \
    -H "Accept: application/pdf" --data-binary @"$f" -o "${f%.zpl}.pdf"
done

The free plan allows 3 requests per second; for large folders add a short pause or use an API key.