How to open .XYZ files (point clouds) on Android, Windows and Linux

Point clouds and simple meshes come out of laser scanners, depth cameras, robots and research code, and they arrive with extensions few programs recognise: .xyz, .pcd, .off, .vtk, .vtp. Often you just want to see what’s in one before installing a large scientific package.

Folders opens all five in its built-in 3D viewer on Android and Windows, for free and offline. Point clouds show as points, meshes as shaded surfaces.

What is a .XYZ file?

An XYZ file is the simplest point cloud there is: a text file with one point per line, written as its X, Y and Z coordinates and sometimes followed by a red, green and blue colour. There’s no header and no stated unit. Many scanners and survey tools export it precisely because anything can read it.

Its four companions in this guide:

Extension	What it is
.xyz	Plain-text point cloud: x y z, optionally r g b, one point per line
.pcd	Point Cloud Data, the format of the Point Cloud Library (PCL), used in robotics and lidar
.off	Object File Format, a minimal text mesh used in geometry research
.vtk	A “legacy” file of the Visualization Toolkit (VTK), used by ParaView and simulation software
.vtp	VTK’s XML PolyData file: surfaces, lines and points

A PCD file has a short header (FIELDS x y z rgb, POINTS 120000, DATA binary and so on), followed by the points as text, binary or compressed binary. Robots running ROS and many lidar tools save it. OFF gives a count of vertices and faces, then lists the vertices, then the faces; shape datasets such as the Princeton Shape Benchmark and ModelNet use it. VTK files can hold many kinds of scientific data, from surfaces to 3D grids of simulation results, and VTP is the newer XML form for surface data.

One warning: chemists use .xyz for something else entirely, a list of atoms such as C 0.000 1.396 0.000. That isn’t a point cloud; see the problems section below.

How to open a .XYZ file with Folders

1. Install Folders from the download page and allow file access.
2. Find the file, or search for its extension from any folder.
3. Tap it. Big clouds show a progress bar, then appear in the 3D viewer.

On Android, files in other apps open with Open with → Folders. On Windows, open them from Folders, or right-click in File Explorer and choose Open with → Folders. The installer adds that menu entry for every type here except .pcd; for a .pcd, use Choose another app once, or open it from inside Folders. On Linux, the 3D viewer needs a web view that the Linux version doesn’t have yet, so Folders offers Open with… to pass the file to CloudCompare or ParaView.

What you can do with it in Folders

• Points or surfaces. XYZ and PCD files show as point clouds. OFF, VTK and VTP files with faces show as shaded meshes; those with only points show as a cloud.
• Colours. XYZ files with RGB columns, PCD files with an rgb field and coloured OFF files (COFF) show their colours.
• Point size. A slider makes points larger or smaller, so a sparse cloud becomes readable and a dense one less cluttered.
• Details. The number of points, or vertices and triangles for meshes, and the size in model units.
• Z axis is up. Lidar and robotics data normally treat Z as up; flip the switch if a scan lies on its side.
• Wireframe for meshes, plus Ground grid, Axes, Auto-rotate and Save screenshot.

It’s a viewer: no measuring, cropping, filtering or converting.

Other ways to open .XYZ files

• CloudCompare (free, Windows and Linux): the standard free tool for point clouds, from cleaning to comparing scans.
• ParaView (free): the home of VTK and VTP files, including volumes and simulation grids.
• MeshLab (free): opens OFF files and point clouds, and can turn clouds into meshes.
• PCL’s pcl_viewer, for PCD files, if you already work with the Point Cloud Library.

Problems opening a .XYZ file?

A chemistry .xyz won’t display. If the first line is a number and the following lines start with element symbols (C, H, O…), it’s a molecule. Open it in a molecule viewer such as Avogadro or Jmol.

“Binary OFF files aren’t supported.” Folders reads OFF as text, including the colour (COFF) and normals (NOFF) variants. Binary OFF and the higher-dimensional variants (4OFF, nOFF) don’t open; re-save as text OFF in the tool that made the file.

A .vtk file won’t open. Folders shows VTK polygon data (POLYDATA): surfaces, lines and points. Structured or unstructured grids of simulation results don’t open. In ParaView, apply Extract Surface and save the result as .vtp.

“The model is too large to open on this device.” A lidar scan can hold hundreds of millions of points. Thin it out first, for example with CloudCompare’s Subsample tool, or open it on a computer.

You have a .las or .laz file. Those are the usual lidar survey formats, and they aren’t among the types Folders opens. CloudCompare reads them and can save an XYZ or PCD copy.

Questions people ask

Can I open a PCD file on Android? Yes. Folders reads text, binary and compressed binary PCD files and shows the points, in colour when the file has an rgb field.

XYZ vs PLY: what’s the difference? Both can store point clouds. XYZ is bare text with no header; PLY has a header describing its contents, can be binary and can hold faces too (PLY guide).

How do I turn an XYZ point cloud into a mesh or STL? Points have no surface, so you need surface reconstruction, such as Poisson reconstruction in CloudCompare or MeshLab. Folders doesn’t convert.

What units are XYZ coordinates in? The file doesn’t say. Lidar data is usually in metres, small desktop scanners often work in millimetres. Folders shows sizes in model units, so a person who measures 1.8 tall was almost certainly recorded in metres.

More guides: PLY files and STL, OBJ and 3MF files, or all 382 file types Folders opens.