Why WebP files don't open in many apps
WebP was created by Google in 2010 but only became widespread around 2018–2020 when Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all added native support. Most websites now serve WebP automatically for faster load times — which means when you save an image from a web page, you often get a .webp file.
The problem is that software outside the browser was slow to follow. Windows Photo Viewer (the built-in viewer on older Windows installs) does not support WebP. Photoshop only added WebP support in 2023. Most email clients reject WebP attachments. Apple's Preview app on macOS added WebP support in 2022 — older Mac software cannot open it either.
The file is not broken or corrupted. The application simply does not have a decoder for the WebP format.
Apps that can't open WebP (and when they added support)
Windows Photo Viewer has no WebP support and likely never will — it is a legacy application that Microsoft stopped updating. The modern Windows Photos app gained WebP support in 2020, but only on up-to-date Windows 10 and 11 installations. Adobe Photoshop added WebP in version 23.2 (February 2022) and enabled it by default in 2023. Lightroom still has limited WebP support as of 2025.
Email clients are the other major blocker. Gmail, Outlook, and Apple Mail render WebP in their web interfaces because they use browser engines, but the attachment preview in desktop Outlook and Apple Mail on older macOS versions fails silently — the image appears blank or shows a broken-file icon.
Convert WebP to JPG without uploading
The converter above uses a WebAssembly build of the @jsquash/webp decoder to read the WebP data locally, then re-encodes it as JPEG at quality 85 using MozJPEG. The file never leaves your device — you can confirm by watching DevTools → Network before dropping the file.
Related: WebP to JPG · iPhone photos not opening on Windows · Discord image too large