Google reconsiders adopting JPEG XL format in Chrome, could it be revived?

Google has announced that it is working to restore support for the once-deprecated image format JPEG XL in its Chrome web browser. At the time of its removal in Chrome 110 at the end of 2022, Google cited lack of interest from the ecosystem as well as insufficient advantages over existing formats to justify the maintenance burden. However, roughly three years after its removal, the decision has been overturned due to trends from other companies and a technical reassessment.

Intent to Prototype: JPEG XL decoding support (image/jxl) in blink
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/WjCKcBw219k/m/NmOyvMCCBAAJ

Google *unkills* JPEG XL?
https://tonisagrista.com/blog/2025/google-unkills-jpegxl/

While the JPEG format, one of the mainstream image formats, offers the advantage of high compression rates and small file sizes, it suffers from the problem of lossy compression, which increases noise and degrades image quality. The JPEG XL format, developed based on Google's PIK and Cloudinary's FUIF , achieves a higher compression rate than the JPEG format while employing lossless compression. The JPEG-XL format is also unique in that it is an open, royalty-free format. The Joint Photographic Experts Group, a standards organization, launched a technical call for proposals for the JPEG XL format in 2017 and released a reference implementation of the JPEG XL format in December 2019. The JPEG-XL format specifications were finalized in December 2020 and became an international standard in October 2021.

Initially, Google offered support for the JPEG XL format through an experimental feature flag starting in Chrome 91, but suddenly announced its intention to deprecate it in late 2022.

Google Chrome considers discontinuing support for the next-generation image standard 'JPEG XL' format, what's the reason? - GIGAZINE

Google's engineering team cited the continued lack of interest from across the ecosystem and the lack of sufficient benefits compared to existing image formats to justify the maintenance burden as reasons for the discontinuation.

JPEG XL decoding support (image/jxl) in blink (tracking bug) [40168998] - Chromium
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40168998#comment85

Then, in Chrome 110, released in early 2023, the support code for the JPEG XL format was removed . The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and others have criticized this decision, saying it 'narrows user choices.'

However, in the years since its discontinuation, the environment surrounding the JPEG XL format has improved significantly. Apple's Safari has begun supporting the JPEG XL format , and Mozilla Firefox has also revised its previous neutral stance and taken a more proactive stance toward supporting it. Furthermore, the PDF Association, which develops PDF format standards, announced in October 2025 that it will adopt the JPEG XL format as the recommended image format in PDF specifications.

Breaking Good (PDF Days Europe 2025) - YouTube


Speaking on behalf of the Chromium development team, Google developer Rick Byers said at the developer group forum for Chromium's rendering engine, Blink , 'Since the JPEG XL format was last evaluated, Safari has released support, and Firefox has updated its support status. We also continue to see support from developers through bug reports, interoperability proposals, and survey data. In addition, there was an announcement that JPEG XL will be added to PDF. Given these positive signs, we welcome contributions to integrate a high-performance, memory-safe JPEG XL decoder into Chromium. Enabling this by default in Chromium requires a long-term maintenance commitment. Once these commitments and our usual release criteria are met, we plan to release it to Chrome.'

Regarding this 'high-performance, memory-safe JPEG XL decoder,' the social news site Hacker News has pointed out that Chromium is likely to adopt a library called ' jxl-rs ' written in Rust. At the same time, some have speculated that Google's silence so far may be due to waiting for the jxl-rs implementation to reach a level that is practical.

In addition,the DICOM API, which is a medical image standard of Google Cloud Platform (GCP), has already introduced a function to reduce file size by 20% by performing lossless compression from existing JPEG images to JPEG XL format, and while converting and providing in real time to applications that require JPEG format, the compression effect of JPEG-XL when saving allows you to save storage capacity.