5 Best Ways to Open WebP Images on Windows 10/11 [2023]

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We all love to download various images or image files from social media, create images for online collages or just do a simple Google search. Usually, when we download these images, we hardly pay attention to the file type. Some photos could be PNG files, while others could be in JPG or JPEG file format. There is another image format called WebP that is less common, but you have undoubtedly seen it when downloading images mainly through Google search.

Most partner websites are increasingly using Google’s relatively new alternative WebP image format. This is a superior lossy compressed image format that minimizes the size of most image files. On average, WebP files are said to be nearly half the size of other high-quality PNG or JPG images. But as easy as they are to download, opening WebP photos is more complicated. Fortunately, there are simple and easy-to-follow ways to open WebP files on your Windows PC.

Let us take a look at these options.

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All versions of Windows OS, including Windows 10 or 11, ship with Microsoft Paint, which provides native support for multiple image formats, including the WebP format. Therefore, using this program to open files in the WebP format is quite easy. For example, you can open WebP images in Paint by following these steps.

Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome, two Chromium-based browsers, can also open WebP files natively. Therefore, you can open the image in your web browser to view it. You can also view any WebP image or image file by dragging and dropping it in these two browsers. Now let us look at all the steps to follow:

You can also make Edge or Chrome the default program for opening WebP files via Properties. To do this, right-click on the WebP image file and then change the default program. Then, when you double-click a WebP image file, the browser of your choice opens that image file.

Related Read: 10 Best Image Downloader Chrome Extensions

Since Google developed the WebP format, you can get a very good working codec directly from Google. Using this method, Windows Photo Viewer can then read WebP image files. Installing the codec is a good idea if you regularly use WebP files on your PC. With the Google WebP Winaero Tweaker codec installed, users can view WebP images in the native Windows Photo Viewer using the Windows Imaging Component. Winaero Tweaker also lets you enable Photo Viewer on Microsoft’s 10 and 11 operating systems. But first, let us take a look at the steps to follow:

After Windows Photo Viewer is enabled, you can install the WebP codec installation on Windows 10 or 11.

Now Windows Photo Viewer can open the WebP image files natively. Simply right-click on any WebP image in File Explorer and then select Open With. Then select the Windows Photo Viewer app, and all WebP image files will be opened with the Photo Viewer app.

One of the best free image viewers for the Windows 10/11 operating system is ImageGlass. ImageGlass supports over 70 image file formats, including WebP, and that’s fantastic. Moreover, the image viewer is fast and offers some options for image editing. Here we take a look at all the steps you can follow to edit Webp images with ImageGlass easily.

If you want to save this image file in a different format, you can open File again and click Save As. Then select your preferred image format from the available Save As Type options and download the image.

The default image viewer in Windows 10 or 11 is the Photos app. However, it does not yet support the WebP format out of the box. However, if you give a WebP image a new file name or an extension like JPG, you can still open the WebP images in that app. After changing the title, the file will still have the same size. The following steps should be followed:

Now the file can be opened in the Windows Photos app without any problems.

Alternatively, you can right-click on the renamed file and choose Show More Options > Open with and Photos to select the Photos app as the default app.

With Windows 10 or 11 operating systems, opening WebP files is now a breeze. If you follow these instructions, you’ll be able to open WebP files quickly and natively on your computer without having to use other third-party applications or complex software to complete the task. There is a possibility that Microsoft will provide an update in the future that adds a default option for reading WebP image files, but it’s impossible to predict when. So the five methods presented above give you a few quick ways to get the job done in the meantime.

Windows 10 does not officially support WebP images. However, there are a few ways to view WebP images on Windows 10.

There are a few ways to open a WebP file as a JPEG. Here are three methods:

WebP images offer a number of advantages over other image formats, such as JPEG and PNG. WebP images can be up to 30% smaller than JPEG images, saving you bandwidth and storage space. WebP images also support transparency and alpha channels, which can be used to create animated GIFs and other image types.

WebP images are not as widely supported as JPEG and PNG images. Some web browsers, such as Safari and Internet Explorer, do not support WebP images. Additionally, some image editing software does not support WebP images.

Yes, you can convert WebP images to other formats like JPEG or PNG. There are various online conversion tools available that allow you to upload a WebP image and convert it to the desired format. Additionally, you can use image editing software like Adobe Photoshop or GIMP to open a WebP image and save it in a different format.

WebP has such a nuance – not all browsers support it. For example, some version of iOS Safari, regular Safari, IE – do not support WebP. Therefore, you must always store at least two versions of each image. Webp (for WebP-enabled browsers) and original image. And give the right version depending on the browser. And the original image must also be optimized/compressed – so that even for browsers without WebP support, images will be optimized (lighter in weight) – this is the third! version of the file.. At the optipic service, I recently noticed a new functionality in which all of this is already in the box. You can even connect everything so that the urls of the images do not change (they remain exactly the same and look like internal urls on my site). But in fact, they are loaded through their system with automatic compression, conversion to webp and recognition of webp support. It turns out that everything is simple and beautiful, and inexpensive))

Now Windows 11 supports WebP images for the Photos app. To change WebP images now we don’t need to rename images. If I am wrong please correct me.

Yes Windows 11 supports Webp images natively, with the latest update, but in our guide we also had to mention a tutorial for Windows 10 users. Plus a conversion to Jpeg will mean that the file can be widely accessed across multiple devices

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