You saved a picture from a website, but instead of a familiar JPG you got a file with a .webp extension that won't open in your editor or paste into a document. Let's look at what this format is and how to work with it.
What is WebP
WebP is an image format created by Google specifically for the web. It compresses images more efficiently than JPEG and PNG at comparable quality, which is why sites using it load faster. As a result, more and more websites now serve images in WebP.
The catch is compatibility: modern browsers display WebP just fine, but many programs — graphic editors, office apps, older viewers — can't open it.
How to open a WebP file
- Browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox) — just drag the file into a browser window and it will display the picture.
- Modern editors — recent versions of Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET support WebP (sometimes via a plugin).
- Windows 11 and updated Windows 10 — open WebP directly in the Photos app.
But if you need to paste the image into Word, send it to someone with older software, or edit it in an app without WebP support, the easiest fix is to convert the file to a universal format.