Chrome 85 to Support AVIF Image Format

While Mozilla has already added experimental support for AVIF image file format to the Firefox browser, Google is bringing support for the same to Chrome 85 which is currently in beta and arrives on August 25. Meanwhile, today, Google added a flag to Chrome 86 Canary to enable or disable AVIF Image format support in the browser.

As AV1 video codec became popular, Alliance for Open Media has brought a new image file format for the web called AVIF based on AV1. It has better compression than JPEG, PNG, WebP, and GIF and supports HDR.

Microsoft has already added support for AVIF format to Windows 10 May 2019 update. If you install AV1 Video extension from Microsoft Store to your Windows 10 device, File Explorer and Paint can open and show AVIF content.

AVIF sample image opened in Chrome 85 beta — Chrome 85 beta showing Netflix’s AVIF image sample

Netflix has been using AVIF images on its ios app for some time for now and says it should replace JPEG.

AVIF format is a competitor to Google’s Webp Image format, supported by Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, and Android.

Netflix offers a lot of AVIF samples to test the next-generation image format in Chrome, to test righ away, ensure you’re using Chrome 85 or higher and

Visit http://download.opencontent.netflix.com/?prefix=AV1/Chimera/AVIF/
Hover over a link, right-click and open it in a new tab to see the AVIF image in the Chrome browser.

According to the Chrome Platform status page, “AVIF Image decode” is enabled by default in Chrome 85. The page reveals the following as motivations to support AVIF in the Chrome browser.

Reduce bandwidth consumption to load pages faster and reduce overall data consumption
HDR color support
Facebook, Netflix, and YouTube have shown interest in shipping AVIF images on the web