Why do images save as WebP instead of JPG?
You saved a picture from a website and got a .webp file that’ll not upload or open. Here is why sites use WebP and the quickest way back to JPG or PNG.
You right-click a picture on a website, choose Save image and end up with photo.webp. Your editing app won’t open it, the form you wanted to upload it to says the format isn’t allowed and renaming it didn’t help. The picture is fine. It is just in a format that the web adopted faster than the rest of your software.
Why websites send WebP
WebP is an image format Google introduced in 2010 to make pages load faster. For the same visible quality, a WebP file is typically a quarter to a third smaller than the equivalent JPG and it can hold transparency like PNG. For a site serving millions of images, that is a large saving in bandwidth and loading time, so most major sites and content platforms now serve WebP to every browser that supports it, which is all of the current ones.
When you save an image, your browser saves exactly the file it received. If the site sent WebP, you get WebP.
Where WebP still causes problems
Browsers were the first to support it; other software has been slower. Older photo editors, some office programs, many upload forms on government, job and school sites and some print services still accept only JPG or PNG. Windows and macOS open WebP in their built-in viewers on current versions, which is why the file often looks fine until you try to use it somewhere else.
Getting a JPG or PNG
The image converter turns WebP into JPG or PNG in your browser. The WebP to JPG page is the right choice for photos and WebP to PNG for logos, screenshots and anything with a transparent background. A whole folder converts at once and comes back as a zip.
Changing the extension doesn’t work, for the reason explained in renamed a file and now it’ll not open: the label changes, the contents don’t.
Going the other way
If you run a website, WebP is worth using for the same reasons the big sites use it. Converting your own images with PNG to WebP or compressing them with the image compressor, is one of the simplest ways to make pages load faster. For help choosing formats generally, see which image format should I use.
Common questions
Is WebP worse quality than JPG?
No. At the same file size WebP usually looks slightly better than JPG, which is exactly why websites use it. Converting a WebP to JPG does add a small, usually invisible, amount of loss, since it is compressed a second time.
Can I just rename the file to .jpg?
No. Renaming changes the label, not the contents. Programs and upload forms that check the file will still see WebP and refuse it or fail to open it. The file has to be converted.
Should I convert to JPG or PNG?
JPG for photographs, since it keeps the file small. PNG for logos, screenshots, graphics with sharp edges and anything with a transparent background, because JPG can’t store transparency and fills it with a solid colour.
Why did the same image save as JPG yesterday?
Many sites decide the format per visit, sending WebP to browsers that say they accept it and JPG to those that don’t. The same address can give you a different file depending on the browser.