# LIBERTIFF -- GeoTIFF File Format

Added in version 3.11.

Driver short name

LIBERTIFF

Driver built-in by default

This driver is built-in by default

This driver is a natively thread-safe alternative to the default GTiff -- GeoTIFF File Format driver. Note that the driver is read-only.

The driver is registered after the GTiff one. Consequently one must explicitly specify `LIBERTIFF` in the allowed drivers of the `GDALOpenEx()`, or with the `-if` option of command line utilities, to use it.

The driver supports the following compression methods: LZW, Deflate, PackBits, LZMA, ZSTD, LERC, JPEG, WEBP and JPEGXL. The driver supports only BitsPerSample values of 1, 8, 16, 32, 64.

The driver does not read any side-car file: `.aux.xml`, `.ovr`, `.msk`, `.imd`, etc.

The driver mostly by-passes the GDAL raster block cache, and only caches (per-thread) the last tile or strip it has read. Read patterns must be adapted accordingly, to avoid repeated data acquisition from storage and decompression.

## Driver capabilities

Supports Georeferencing

This driver supports georeferencing

Supports VirtualIO

This driver supports virtual I/O operations (/vsimem/, etc.)

## Open options

Open options can be specified in command-line tools using the syntax `-oo <NAME>=<VALUE>` or by providing the appropriate arguments to `GDALOpenEx()` (C) or `gdal.OpenEx` (Python). This driver supports the following open options:

NUM_THREADS=[<number_of_threads>​/​ALL_CPUS]: This option also enables multi-threaded decoding when RasterIO() requests intersect several tiles/strips. The `GDAL_NUM_THREADS` configuration option can also be used as an alternative to setting the open option.