Google rekindles relationship with jilted JPEG XL image format

Google has added support for the JPEG XL (JXL) image format to the open source Chromium code base, reversing a decision in 2022 to drop the technology.

A recent commit to integrate and enable the JXL decoder means that future releases of Google Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers will include code to process and present JXL images.

The format's supporters argue JXL can be used to recompress existing JPEG images without loss so they're 20 percent smaller, which alone would represent a significant bandwidth saving for websites and content delivery networks.

It also offers other improvements over existing image file formats, like progressive decoding that prioritizes salient image elements – as noted in 2021 by Google engineers – and better lossy and lossless compression than formats like AVIF, MozJPEG, and WebP.

JPEG XL [PDF] began with a call for proposals in 2017. It started taking shape in 2019 through an ...