It’s 2023, yet, Some Apps and Operating Systems including Windows 11, Windows 10, and older don’t support WebP image format out of the box. This article reveals the best ways to open and view WebP Images on Windows.
What is WebP?
WebP is a new image format from Google. It Compresses lossy images like JPEG, PNG, and other image formats but still preserves the quality and resolution.
According to Google, WebP images are 40% smaller than JPEG images of similar quality.
Still, the world hasn’t adopted the WebP image format yet. There is no native support for this image format on Microsoft Windows 11 Operating systems with image viewers like Windows Photo Viewer, Photos app, and other image editing tools.
How to open WebP images in Windows 11 and Windows 10
As of now, WebP image format support is enabled and supported in modern browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Opera.
By downloading and installing WebP Codec for Windows, you can open WebP images in Windows Photo Viewer and their thumbnails in Windows Explorer on Windows 11 and Windows 10 without any issues.
Open and View Google’s WebP Images in Sumatra PDF Reader
WebP Codec for Windows supports Windows XP SP3/Vista/7, but we can confirm that WebP Codec works on Windows 11 as well after testing.
You can open and see sample WebP images installed in the WebP Codec directory with “Windows Photo Viewer”.
Installing the program with the complete option brings back Windows Photo Viewer to Windows 11 as well.
Do remember, that Microsoft has released a new Photos app for Windows 11 that doesn’t support WebP files.
Another alternative is to use the new Paint app in Windows 11.
How to Open WebP files in JPEG or another format with Paint in Windows 11
- Click Start, type Paint, and open the app.
- Click File > open and navigate to WebP file location and select it.
- Click File and choose from PNG or JPEG or BMP or GIF or another format to save to disk.
Note: You can also open the WebP image by right-clicking on it and choosing the Paint option in Open with Dialog.
Download WebP Codec for Windows
Web browsers that support WebP on Windows
- Firefox
- Google Chrome
- Microsoft Edge Chromium
- Opera
Final words: If you have an extensive collection of WebP images on your hard drive running Windows 11, Windows 10, or older, just download and install the WebP codec, it works as WebP Viewer. Doing so, you’ll get Windows Photo Viewer, and the Paint app in Windows 11 as well as Photos App works too.
Webp codec not found on your server.
Thanks for alerting us. Updated the link, now working fine.
This simply doesn’t work. Thanks for trying.
This worked perfectly for me.
Not sure about Doug’s situation. I’m using Windows 10 on a custom-built computer with a pretty low-end graphics card.
Thank you for the easy workaround!
The only thing I cannot get to work is an animated WebP image (think animated GIF). Those won’t open for me unless I open with chrome.
works fine on my Win 10. Thank You!
thanks work just fine
OMG! Thank you so much! I wish there was a gif too!
Yup ! it is working. Thanku !
BROKE fix your link
Download link is working fine.
thank you for this! Working great on Win7 64-bit
Works great on my Windows 10 laptop. thanks!!
Worked like a charm here – Windows 10 update
Worked beautifully, no restart needed, no nothing, it just worked!
Perfect! Out-of-the-box, no restart, instant!
Working great!
WORKED! thank you very much, the lack of webp thumbnails has been annoying me for months. No more!
Works really nice except it doesn’t preview the image when you’re in windows explorer in Windows 10. Hopefully this gets fixed.
Does this not work on Windows 7?
Ofcourse, yes.
It seems this is not used in the Background settings in Windows 10 or not compatible with it. I have a folder w/ all webp images and when I select this folder in Background settings, the desktop does not switch to any of the images, even after I right-click on desktop and choose “Next desktop background” on the context menu.
Working with preview, no restart need: Windows7 64b
W10 1809 was already showing me thumbnails of .webp-files in a folder by viewing files in thumbnail-mode. But I could not open them up in Windows Photo Viewer or Photos. Now with this tool I can use Photo Viewer, but the images show much too dark, compared to the thumbnails. The same is true for the sample image(s). What is going wrong here? This way it’s rather useless… Firefox shows them perfect though.
Firefox added WebP support in version 65 https://techdows.com/2018/11/firefox-65-gets-webp-image-support.html
I tested WebpCodecSetup.exe on some more OS’s. With W7-SP1 and W10-1607 on two older machines it worked fine as expected: Windows Explorer and Photo Viewer would show equal results with .webp and .jpg files. But on W10-1809 things seem to get mixed up with the ‘now-built-in’ Windows Explorer support for .webp files: the thumbnails show well, but Windows Photo Viewer is handling .webp files different now and shows them much too dark! Any possible fix for this?
same issue as STEEL.
Steel
September 12, 2018 @ 11:26 pm
Works really nice except it doesn’t preview the image when you’re in windows explorer in Windows 10. Hopefully this gets fixed.
Any idea on how to fix it?
Thank you!!!! Worked fine!
Found a solution for the win10 dark webp image issue, though I’ve yet to thoroughly test it so *buyer beware*. Both Chrome and Opera still open them. I don’t have firefox installed at the moment so I can’t say. Here are the instructions:
Make sure the google webp codec is not installed.
Open cmd as Admin (or open Powershell as admin and skip next step)
Type: powershell
Type: Get-AppxPackage *Microsoft.WebpImageExtension* | Remove-AppxPackage
Test by trying to open a webp image in Windows Photo Viewer. It should fail. Ignore the thumbnail image if it is there, as this was generated beforehand. Now install Google’s webp codec (follow the link in the post). Open the webp image with Windows Photo Viewer again. This worked for me. Not only did it fix the darkening issue, but it loaded the image much faster. I was having trouble with images just sitting in the fuzzy “loading” phase, too. I just restarted my PC to make sure windows wouldn’t “fix” it, and it is so far still OK. Hope this helps.
great article. the codec package worked perfectly on my windows 7 machine. thanks!
Thanks for the article.
It works for webp – pictures, but still not for webp animations, espeacially the preview in windows.
Could you gain other experiences?
Maybe somebody can help me, when you found a solution to see webp-animation previews in windows.
Thanks
work to me on windows 10
Thanks.
Installed this on Windows 7 x64 and worked perfectly.
Works on W7
Thanks!
This does not allow me to view previews of WebP animations in Windows 7 Photo Viewer. Will this ever get fixed? It’s annoying to download an animation and then when I try to open it in Photo Viewer I get an error message. I hope someone will work on fixing this…doesn’t seem as if they know how or that they’re simply not interested. :(
thank you!!!!