Toolman

.webp — WebP Image

Image image/webp

What a .webp file is

Google's web image format, supporting both lossy and lossless compression plus transparency and animation. Typically 25–35% smaller than JPEG at matching quality.

How to open it

Every current browser opens it. Older desktop software may not — convert to PNG or JPEG.

Worth knowing

WebP is the sensible default for images on a website today. Its successor AVIF compresses better still but encodes more slowly.

How to identify a .webp file

A file's extension is only its name — renaming a.png to a.webp changes nothing inside. What software actually reads is the magic number, the first few bytes of the file.

Signature52 49 46 46 .. .. .. .. 57 45 42 50
MIME typeimage/webp
CategoryImage

RIFF container with "WEBP" at offset 8.

# what is this file really?
file mystery.webp

# look at the first bytes yourself
xxd mystery.webp | head -2
head -c 16 mystery.webp | xxd

# Windows PowerShell
Get-Content mystery.webp -AsByteStream -TotalCount 16 | Format-Hex

Converting it

You can convert WEBP in your browser without uploading it anywhere: WEBP to PNG, WEBP to JPG.

Frequently asked questions

What is a .webp file?

Google's web image format, supporting both lossy and lossless compression plus transparency and animation. Typically 25–35% smaller than JPEG at matching quality.

How do I open a .webp file?

Every current browser opens it. Older desktop software may not — convert to PNG or JPEG.

Is .webp safe to open?

Yes. A .webp file is data, not code — opening one cannot execute anything by itself.

Can I change a file's extension to convert it?

No. Renaming changes the label, not the bytes. The one place it appears to work is between formats that genuinely share a container — renaming .docx to .zip works because a DOCX is a ZIP. Everything else needs a real converter.

Other image formats

Other formats

All file formats