File extension

.webp

WebP image format

.webp files are WebP images: a modern web image format from Google offering both lossy and lossless compression, transparency, and animation, typically smaller than equivalent JPEG, PNG, or GIF.

Known meanings

Formats and reference material for .webp

WebP image format

Modern RIFF-based web image format with lossy, lossless, alpha, and animation support

  • 2d-graphics internet
  • Google
Open link

Details

Format notes

WebP

WebP is an image format developed by Google to make web images smaller without sacrificing quality. It supports both lossy and lossless compression in a single format, along with an alpha (transparency) channel and animation, so it can serve as a more efficient replacement for JPEG, PNG, and animated GIF at once. In typical use, lossy WebP is meaningfully smaller than comparable JPEG, and lossless WebP is smaller than PNG.

Technically, WebP is packaged in a RIFF container beginning with RIFF....WEBP. Lossy WebP reuses the intra-frame (keyframe) coding of the VP8 video codec, while lossless WebP uses a dedicated method with transforms and entropy coding designed for exact reconstruction. Transparency and animation are expressed through extended chunks (VP8X, ALPH, ANIM/ANMF), which is why a single format can cover so many cases.

Adoption

WebP is now supported by all major browsers and by most image tooling, which has made it a common default for optimized web delivery. It is often produced automatically by build pipelines and content delivery networks that negotiate the best format per client. The media type is image/webp.

Preservation And Security Notes

Lossy WebP discards data like JPEG, so for archiving keep an original master and treat WebP as a delivery derivative; lossless WebP is suitable where exact pixels matter. As with any codec, WebP decoders have been targeted by memory-safety vulnerabilities, so software handling untrusted WebP should validate chunk sizes and dimensions and stay patched against known decoder issues.

Further Reading

  • WebP documentation (Google): https://developers.google.com/speed/webp
  • WebP container specification: https://developers.google.com/speed/webp/docs/riff_container