What is WebP, and should you switch to it?

WebP is the format you probably already have without asking for it. Save an image from most websites today and you get a .webp file — then discover that half the programs on your computer refuse to open it.

What it actually gives you

• Roughly 25–35% smaller than JPG at the same perceived quality on photographs.
• Often 50–80% smaller than PNG on screenshots and flat graphics.
• A full alpha channel, so it does everything PNG does for transparency.
• Animation support, so it can replace GIF at a fraction of the size.

That combination is unusual. Before WebP you had to choose between good photo compression and transparency support; WebP does both.

Why your file manager will not open it

Browser support is not the problem — Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari have all handled WebP for years. The gaps are everywhere else: older versions of Photoshop, most print-shop upload forms, plenty of e-commerce back ends, and some phone gallery apps.

So the practical rule is about destination, not quality. Going onto a web page you control? WebP. Going to somebody else, or into a program you do not control? Convert it to JPG first and stop worrying.

What it does for page speed

Images are usually the heaviest thing on a page, and Largest Contentful Paint — one of the metrics Google measures — is very often an image. Cutting a third off your image weight is the single biggest performance win available on most sites, and it takes minutes.

What about AVIF?

AVIF compresses even better than WebP — often another 20% on top. The trade-off is decoding cost: it takes noticeably more processing to display, and support outside browsers is thinner still. For most people WebP is the sensible middle ground today.