Google’s WEBP image format is great: Its unique compression system can render images about two-thirds the size of the same image rendered in JPEG or PNG format.

Despite years of development, appearing prominently in Google products, and experiencing widespread adoption, WEBP still isn’t fully supported by some of the most common image tools around, such as Microsoft’s Photos app — although it does. Is backed by old Windows Photo Viewer, Here’s how to save a WEBP image in a more common format.

Using Microsoft Edge’s Internet Explorer Mode

One browser—Microsoft Internet Explorer—does not support WEBP. Therefore, if a website uses .webp files, it must serve up JPEG or PNG versions of the same images to Microsoft Edge running in Internet Explorer mode. Getting a JPEG or PNG version of an image on a website is often as simple as opening it in Edge’s Internet Explorer mode and then downloading the image from that browser.

First, you need to make sure you have Edge’s internet explorer mode enabled,

related: How to Use Internet Explorer Mode in Edge

Go to a webpage that contains a WEBP image, highlight the URL, right-click on it, then click “Copy.”

Fire up Edge, right-click the address bar, click “Paste,” and then press Enter.

Then click on the three dots in the upper right corner to open the “Settings and more” menu.

Look for the options and click “Reload in Internet Explorer Mode” – it’s near the bottom.

If the website does the proper server-side conversion, the page will look the same, but this time all images will be in JPEG or PNG format.

Right-click on the image, then click “Save Image As”.

Navigate to a destination folder, then click “Save” and your image will be downloaded to that folder.

That’s it. Navigate to the image and open or edit it like any other JPEG.

using ms paint

If you use Windows 10 or Windows 11, you can download a WEBP image to your hard drive and use MS Paint to open it.

Why not use a piece of software you already have on your PC to convert any images you have? Paint converts WEBP to JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF and a few other formats without downloading any additional software.

Right-click the image, then click Open With > Paint if it’s not set to open WEBP files by default.

After opening the image in Paint, click File > Save As, then choose a format from the list available.

Comment: Paint on Windows 10 looks quite different, but the options are the same.

Choose a destination for the file, then click “Save.”

Once your image is converted, it will appear in the folder you saved it.

using command line

If you’re more comfortable behind the command line, Google offers utilities to encode, decode, and view WEBP Linux, windowsAnd Mac OS X, It’s an advanced approach that’s great for integrating into programs and websites, but if you want to learn how to use command line tools, feel free to follow along.

Depending on your OS, use the appropriate links above to download the libraries, then extract the files to your computer. We will be using Windows PowerShell, but it should work equally well on all systems.

Open PowerShell in the folder containing the .webp files to be converted. Use cd Command to change directory. It should look something like this, replacing “NAME” with your Windows username:

cd C:\users\NAME\Pictures

If you look in the “bin” folder, you can see some files with .exe extension. For this guide, we will use dwebp.exe Command to decode (convert) WEBP images. The syntax of the command looks something like this:

C:\Path\To\dwebp.exe inputFile.webp -o outputFile

Notice how we specified the file extension for the output image? The decoder converts images to other formats, so we need to be specific. We used PNG in this example, but it can output in TIFF, BMP, and a few others when using the other switch. Full documentation is on the can google webpage website,

Although there is no option to convert to JPEG, if you want to convert an image to JPEG, all you need to do is put “.jpeg” at the end of the output file when you use it. -o change.

tip: If you plan to use this tool frequently, you may consider Adding Encoder, Decoder and Viewer Executables to Your System’s Path, for easy access to the road. This makes it so that you don’t need to be in the same directory as the executable when you want to run them from the command line from any folder.

related: How to Edit Your System Path for Easier Command Line Access in Windows

After the tool has converted and saved the image, you can navigate to the location of the output file, and open it with any program you want.

Using online conversion tools

If you’d rather use a website to convert a WEBP image to another format, there are a number of sites offering free online conversion tools to do so. They handle everything server-side, which means you don’t need to download and install any software or learn command line tools.

As with any online file conversion tool, you should not upload any sensitive or confidential files. If you’re concerned that someone else might see it—for example, if it’s an image of a confidential document—it’s best to work with the file on your computer.

For the purpose of this guide, we will use Zamzari Online file conversion tool. It is completely free to use and the service says that the uploaded file is deleted from the server within 24 hours. If you want to convert more than five free concurrent conversions, It also offers paid membership,

Go to the Zamzar website, click “Upload,” select the file you want to convert, then click “Open.” Alternatively, simply drag and drop the files from your computer into a browser tab.

Next, click “Choose Format” and choose a supported format to convert from the drop-down menu.

Click “Convert Now”.

Depending on the size of the file, the conversion should only take a few seconds. After conversion, you will be redirected to the download page, then click on the “Download” button to start the download.

It will be automatically saved to your default download location unless your The browser prompts you for a Downloads folder location each time.

related: How to Change the Location of the Chrome Downloads Folder

To view the image, go to the folder where you saved it and open it with your favorite image viewer.

Using a Special URL Trick

As you might expect, Google uses its own WEBP images for all products and services. google play store, In some situations, you can slightly modify the URL of an image to display it in a different format. While this method doesn’t work on all websites, if you need to quickly force the Google Play Store to change an image for you, this neat little trick can save you some time.

Open Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, or Opera – almost any browser that supports WEBP image display. Visit a site that uses WEBP images for bandwidth savings, such as any app listing play.google.com,

Right-click or long-press on one of the images, and then click the “Open image in new tab” option. The WEBP image then gets its own tab, and the URL at the top of that tab is a link directly to the image asset – without rendering anything else on the page.

Click the URL bar, remove the last three characters (“-rw”) in the address, and then press “Enter.” The same image will be displayed again, but this time it is rendered in its original format, usually JPEG or PNG. Right-click or long-press on the image, and then select the “Save Image As” option. He downloads it in the original format – just like any other file.

You may be thinking, “Isn’t there an easier way to do this?” There is – as with most things browser related, the solution is A browser extension. There are plenty of extensions out there that will automatically handle the conversion of WEBP files to any other image format of your choice, but you probably shouldn’t be using them. Browser Extensions Are a Privacy NightmareAnd you should avoid using them whenever they are not strictly necessary.