Does FoodSaver work with mylar bags?

A FoodSaver can heat-seal almost any mylar bag shut. Whether it pulls an actual vacuum on that bag first is a separate question, and the answer is usually no. That gap between "sealed" and "actually vacuumed" is the whole problem this guide exists to untangle, and it explains a failure that looks identical to success: lay a bag of pantry rice flat, hit the button, wait for the familiar collapse as the pump does its work. It doesn't come. The bag sits there just as full of air as when you started, right up until the seal bar clicks shut across the top and the cycle ends anyway. The seam looks closed. Nobody opening that bag next week would notice the difference between this and a bag that actually lost its air, not without cutting it open to check.

Whether a FoodSaver pulls that vacuum depends entirely on whether the mylar has the same embossed, channel-textured surface a FoodSaver already needs for its own bags; smooth mylar, the kind most people picture when they hear the word, gives the machine's suction nothing to grip. We pulled a FoodSaver-focused sealing guide, a bag retailer's chamber-versus-suction explainer, two mylar product spec pages, and long-term food-storage guides that document mil thickness, oxygen-absorber sizing and the workarounds preppers actually use. Every factual statement below carries a marker like (E·01) pointing to the evidence ledger at the end.

Sealing shut and pulling a vacuum are different jobs

Start with what the machine is actually doing in those few seconds. A FoodSaver runs two operations back to back: pull air out through the bag's open mouth, then run a heated bar across the top to weld the plastic shut. Those are separate mechanisms, and mylar breaks the first one long before it touches the second. A sealing guide aimed squarely at this question puts it plainly: "FoodSaver machines can heat-seal many mylar bags," even where "it can't vacuum smooth mylar" (E·04). The bar gets hot, the layers melt together, the seam holds. Nothing about that step cares whether air actually left the bag first.

FoodSaver's own bags exist specifically to solve the other half. Its own material carries a waffle-style texture "so air keeps flowing to the pump," and that's the construction FoodSaver directs buyers toward for vacuum sealing (E·01). Mylar off a random supplier roll usually isn't built that way at all, which is the whole problem in one sentence.

Why smooth mylar gives the pump nothing to grip

A FoodSaver, like other clamp-style suction sealers, pulls air out through the open end of the bag, and it can only do that if the bag's inner surface gives the air somewhere to travel while the mouth is being squeezed shut. That's what the embossing on ordinary vacuum bags is for, a point our guide to generic bags and FoodSaver machines covers in detail for plastic pouches. Mylar without that texture has smooth walls on both sides. "Smooth Mylar bags lack the internal channels needed for suction vacuum sealers to remove air properly, so they typically don't seal effectively with these machines" (E·02). The mouth collapses flat before the pump finishes its job, the same failure mode as an unembossed plastic bag, just wrapped in foil instead of clear film.

Chamber sealers sidestep the whole problem, and it's worth knowing why if you're deciding between machine classes rather than just bags. A chamber machine doesn't pull air through the bag mouth at all; it drops air pressure around the entire bag at once, inside a sealed chamber, so there's no channel to fail. One retailer's comparison states it directly: chamber sealers "differ from suction sealers like FoodSaver by removing air from both the bag and the chamber, allowing them to seal any type of Mylar bag smooth or embossed without issue" (E·03). Our chamber vs external vacuum sealer guide runs the fuller version of that trade-off, liquids and bag cost included, for readers deciding whether the switch is worth it just to stop fighting mylar.

Mylar built to actually vacuum

Buy the right mylar and the problem disappears rather than needing a workaround. Textured mylar exists as its own product category, built the same way ordinary channel bags are, and at least one maker's spec page lists it at "5.9-mil thickness" with "textured sides" meant to "help eliminate hidden air pockets," compatible with most external sealers, though sealing it "takes increased time and temperature" compared with a standard bag (E·05). A different brand, sold explicitly as FoodSaver compatible, specifies "4 Mil per side" with "patented micro-textured interior channels," working across FoodSaver, Seal-A-Meal, Weston, Nesco and Anova machines with no adapter (E·06).

Even with the right bag, the result isn't quite as effortless as a normal freezer pouch. One long-term storage guide notes that most household vacuum sealers won't touch standard smooth mylar, but that purpose-built compatible mylar "can be vacuum sealed with a standard FoodSaver vacuum sealer," adding the caveat that "it can be just a little tricky" (E·09). Nobody quantifies exactly what that means in practice, how many tries, how often the seal fails on the first attempt, but the caveat is there in a guide that otherwise recommends the bags.

How thick, and why mil matters at all

A mil is one-thousandth of an inch, small enough that the number sounds like it shouldn't matter and large enough in practice that it does. "Thicker bags stand up better to sharp edges, freezer conditions, and long-term storage" (E·14). For dry-goods storage specifically, two independent guides land on the same window without citing each other: one recommends "5 mil or 7 mil bags for packaging dry goods for long-term storage" (E·07), and a second calls 5-mil "the sweet spot for most home storage," reserving 7-mil "for tough storage conditions or things with sharp edges" (E·08). Neither source explains the engineering behind that specific range; it reads as settled community practice among storage guides rather than a cited material standard, but two unrelated sources landing on the same numbers is worth something.

Workarounds when all you have is smooth mylar

None of this requires giving up on mylar you already own. The documented options fall into three groups, and they're worth listing exactly rather than vaguely.

Add a channel yourself. The simplest version: slide a short strip of ordinary textured vacuum bag into the mylar's open mouth before sealing. "If you place a one inch strip of a vacuum seal in the opening of a Mylar bag before sealing, it allows air to get out" (E·11). A second guide describes the same trick with more options for what to insert: "a textured strip from a vacuum sealer bag, a straw, zip tie, or mesh to allow air extraction" (E·13). Pull the insert free once the vacuum's drawn, then finish the seal.

Skip vacuum evacuation and seal with heat alone. Once you've accepted that a smooth bag won't evacuate on a suction machine, an impulse sealer, the kind that runs a short pulse of current through a wire to melt the plastic, is the more purpose-built tool. One guide argues for it directly: "an impulse sealer wins. It delivers a wider, hotter, more controlled weld" (E·12) than a FoodSaver's narrower bar. Lacking one, a flat iron or hair straightener does the same job at home; a storage guide lists "a heat sealer, double hand-held bar sealer, or an impulse sealer" as the professional tools, with the household substitute spelled out plainly: "we use a flat iron or hair straightener. A clothes iron and a block of wood aren't quite as convenient but will definitely do the job" (E·07).

Let an oxygen absorber do the work vacuum depth would have done. This is the option long-term storage guides lean on most, and it changes the whole question. An absorber doesn't need the bag to start empty of air; it chemically scavenges the oxygen already trapped inside after the seal is closed, which is most of what spoils dry food in storage. Sizing is standardized by bag volume: roughly "2000cc" for a 5-gallon bag, "300cc" for a 1-gallon bag, and "100cc" for a 1-quart bag or mason jar (E·10). Get the absorber size right, and a heat-only seal on smooth mylar, no vacuum step at all, is a normal part of how dry goods get packed for the long term, not a compromise.

None of this is instrumented. Nobody has measured seal strength or vacuum depth head-to-head between a FoodSaver, an impulse sealer and a hair straightener on the same mylar bag, so the "wider, hotter, more controlled weld" claim for impulse sealers is asserted rather than measured against a named FoodSaver model (E·12), and how often the strip-or-straw channel trick needs a second attempt is unquantified (E·11, E·13). FoodSaver.com and its help center blocked direct retrieval throughout this research, so the company's own bag-material guidance above rests on a third-party summary rather than a page we opened ourselves, and the 5-to-7-mil storage recommendation, though consistent across independent guides, cites no engineering source behind the specific range.

Bottom line

A FoodSaver and mylar aren't incompatible. They're just answering two different questions that sound like one. Sealing the seam works on almost any mylar you hand the machine. Pulling a real vacuum on it works only when the mylar has the texture a suction sealer needs, or when you build that texture in yourself with a strip or a straw. And for a lot of long-term storage, the vacuum step turns out to be optional anyway, once an oxygen absorber is doing the actual work of keeping the food shelf-stable. Buy mylar built for your machine, add a channel if you didn't, or skip the vacuum question and absorb the oxygen instead. All three are documented, and none of them requires guessing.