WebP Converter: Open, Convert and Make WebP Files

To convert a WebP file, leave the switch above on From WebP, drop your .webp images into the box, and pick what you want out: PNG, JPG, GIF or PDF. Click Convert all, then download each file on its own or the whole batch as one .zip. To convert to WebP instead, flip the switch to To WebP and drop in PNG or JPG images.

Which output? PNG keeps every pixel and any transparent background, so it's the safe pick for logos, screenshots and stickers. JPG makes much smaller files from photos and has a quality slider (85% is a good default), but it has no transparency, so see-through areas come out white. GIF keeps an animated WebP moving, every frame with its timing, but each frame gets only 256 colors. The page to convert an animated WebP to GIF explains what else changes. PDF puts each image on its own page at full size, for when a form wants a document. If you only ever need one of these, the WebP to PNG converter opens with PNG already set.

Nothing is uploaded. Your browser already knows how to read WebP, since it's how most websites send you images, so the converter uses that built-in decoder in a background worker and writes the new file on your device. The PDF is assembled there too.

How to convert images to WebP

Switch the tool to To WebP, drop in your PNG or JPG files, and choose Lossy or Lossless. Lossy has a quality slider, and 75 to 85% is the usual range for photos on a website: the file shrinks a lot and you'd struggle to see a difference. Lossless keeps every pixel, which suits logos and screenshots. Transparent PNGs stay transparent either way, because WebP has an alpha channel too. The PNG to WebP converter shows what each mode did to our own images.

It works in Safari too. Safari can't write WebP by itself, so on an iPhone or a Mac the page loads Google's WebP encoder as WebAssembly the first time you convert, and it runs on your device like everything else. If you're starting from a vector logo, the SVG to WebP converter renders it at the exact size you need.

How to open a WebP file on Windows

Windows 11 opens WebP in Photos and Paint with nothing to install. On Windows 10, install the free WebP Image Extensions from the Microsoft Store and the same apps will open it. To get a copy in another format, open it in Paint and use File, Save as. That's one image at a time; for a folder of them, drop them all in above and take one .zip.

How to open a WebP file on a Mac

Preview opens WebP on macOS Big Sur (11) and later. Double-click the file, then choose File, Export to save it as JPEG or PNG. Older Macs can't open it in Preview at all, but this page works there in Chrome or Firefox.

WebP files on iPhone and Android

iPhones and iPads on iOS 14 or later show WebP in Photos and Files, and Android has read it for over a decade. The trouble is usually the next app along: an upload form, an older editor, a printing kiosk. Open this page in your phone's browser, tap the box, choose the image, and save the PNG or JPG it gives you back.

We took the illustration at the top of our own homepage, a 79 KB WebP, 1024 × 1024 pixels, with a transparent background, and ran it through each output in Chrome.

As PNG it came out at 361 KB, transparency intact. That's the one to use if it's going into a slide or a design over a colored background. As JPG at 85% it was just 24 KB, but the see-through background turned white, and the finished row said so. Fine for a white page, wrong for anything else; the WebP to JPG page explains why a JPG is usually bigger than the WebP, and when it isn't. As PDF, one page at 1024 × 1024, it was 267 KB.

Then the other way round. Our 1200 × 630 social sharing image, a 52 KB PNG, went To WebP at 85% and came out at 14 KB, about 73% smaller, with no difference we could see side by side. Savings like that, on every image of a page, are why websites use WebP.

WebP is an image format made by Google and released in 2010. Its whole point is size: the same picture in fewer bytes, so web pages load faster. Every current browser shows it, which is why so many websites now send WebP instead of JPG or PNG, and why the image you save from a page so often turns out to be a .webp.

Support outside the browser took years longer to arrive. Windows 10, older Macs, older versions of Photoshop and plenty of upload forms still don't know what to do with one, and that's why a WebP converter is still useful.

What is a WebP file?

A .webp file is an image in Google's WebP format. It can hold a photo compressed the lossy way (like JPG, using the same method that compresses each frame of a VP8 video), or a graphic compressed losslessly (like PNG). Either kind can have a transparent background, and a WebP can also be animated, like a GIF. Its MIME type is image/webp, and every one starts with the bytes RIFF and WEBP, which is how this tool checks a file is really a WebP before converting it.

To keep an animated WebP moving, pick GIF: every frame comes across with its timing. PNG, JPG and a PDF page each hold a single still image, so those give you the first frame, and the finished row tells you when that happened.

WebP vs PNG and JPG

Google's own tests found lossless WebP files about 26% smaller than the same image as PNG, and lossy WebP 25 to 34% smaller than a JPG of similar quality. It also does transparency, which JPG can't, and animation, which PNG only manages in its rarer APNG form. What it doesn't have is PNG and JPG's decades of support in every program ever made.

So WebP is the better format for a website, and PNG or JPG is the safer one for anything that leaves the browser: editing, printing, email, uploads. Converting a WebP to PNG keeps every pixel; the WebP to PNG page goes into why that PNG is usually several times bigger.

Should you convert images to WebP?

For images on your own website, usually yes. Smaller files mean faster pages, and both visitors and Google notice a slow one. Keep your originals as PNG or JPG, though, and convert copies. WebP can't be bigger than 16,383 pixels on either side, and converting a JPG to WebP compresses it a second time, so you don't want to go round in circles between the two.

For sending to people or printing, no. Stick with JPG or PNG there.