How to open and extract RPF files in GTA V

Before you start

• Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) and GTA V Legacy for PC from Steam, Epic Games or the Rockstar Games Launcher. GTA V Enhanced (GTA5_Enhanced.exe) is not supported.
• RPFView, free from the download page.

Opening, browsing and extracting never change your game files. Only editing and saving an archive does.

1. Set up the game folder and keys

The game's archives are encrypted, and RPFView ships no Rockstar keys: it derives them once from your own GTA5.exe. On the first start, the Welcome to RPFView dialog walks you through it.

1. Under 1. Game folder, check the folder RPFView found. It should say GTA V Legacy installation found. If it's empty, click Detect, or Browse… and pick the folder that contains GTA5.exe.
2. Under 2. Archive keys, tick I agree to download magic.dat (about 150 KB) from CodeWalker's GitHub repository when it is needed. and click Set up keys. If you have a local copy of magic.dat (for example from CodeWalker), use Browse for magic.dat… under Other ways to get the keys instead; then nothing is downloaded.
3. When the card says Keys ready, click Done.

The keys are cached on your PC, so later starts need nothing. You can come back to this dialog any time with Tools → Game folder & keys… or by clicking the keys status at the bottom of the window.

2. Browse the archives

The folder tree on the left starts at Grand Theft Auto V, your game folder. Archives open like folders, including archives inside archives.

1. Double-click an archive such as x64e.rpf to open it, then keep going: levels → gta5 → vehicles.rpf.
2. Or jump straight there: press Ctrl+L, type a path such as x64e.rpf\levels\gta5\vehicles.rpf and press Enter. Paths relative to the game folder work.
3. Go back with Alt+Left, and one level up with Backspace.

Click a file to see it in the preview pane on the right: textures, 3D models and metadata as XML. Ctrl+P shows or hides the pane.

3. Search all game files

1. Press Ctrl+F or click the Search game files box.
2. Type part of a name and press Enter. RPFView searches all of the game's roughly 400,000 files.
3. Double-click a result, or right-click it and choose Go to file, to open the folder it's in.

Searches can use wildcards and filters, and filters combine:

adder*                 names starting with "adder"
*.ytd                  every texture dictionary
ext:ydr,yft            models only
path:vehicles.rpf      only inside vehicles.rpf

Search uses an index that RPFView builds at startup once the keys are set up. If it says the index hasn't been built yet, choose Tools → Rebuild search index.

4. Extract files

Select one or more files or folders, then pick how to export them:

• Export… (Ctrl+E) saves the files exactly as they are stored in the archive. One file asks for a file name; several files or a folder ask for a folder, and folders are exported with everything in them.
• Export as… (Ctrl+Shift+E) converts what it can: texture dictionaries (.ytd) to a folder of DDS or PNG files, models (.ydr, .ydd, .yft) to glTF binary (.glb) or OBJ, and metadata (.ymt, .ymap, .ytyp, .meta …) to XML. Everything else is exported as stored.
• Or drag the selection from RPFView into Windows Explorer, which exports it as stored (up to 2 GB at a time).

If files with the same names are already in the destination, RPFView asks whether to Replace them or Skip existing.

Open an RPF file from a mod

To look inside an archive outside the game folder, such as the dlc.rpf of a downloaded mod, choose File → Open archive… (Ctrl+O). It appears as its own entry in the folder tree and under File → Recent archives.

Common problems

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