Firefox Is Getting JPEG XL Support Next Month

Firefox 157 will bring JPEG XL support to all users, giving Mozilla’s browser native access to the modern image format after years of limited availability.

Mozilla developer Timothy Nikkel confirmed that Firefox will enable JPEG XL for everyone with Firefox 157, which Mozilla expects to release late next month.

Firefox 157 will enable JPEG XL by default

JPEG XL serves as a modern, royalty-free successor to JPEG and could also replace formats such as PNG, GIF, and WebP in some cases.

The format can reduce JPEG file sizes by roughly 20% while maintaining image quality. It also supports photos, lossless graphics, and animation.

One of JPEG XL’s more unusual features is its ability to reconstruct the original JPEG file byte-for-byte after conversion. WebP and AVIF do not offer the same capability.

Firefox already supports JPEG XL in Nightly builds, but users currently need to enable the image.jxl.enabled switch manually.

Firefox 157 will remove that limitation and make support available to all users.

Firefox uses Rust to decode JPEG XL images

Mozilla uses the Rust-based jxl-rs decoder to render JPEG XL images in Firefox.

Recent jxl-rs 0.6.0 updates added multithreaded decoding, which reportedly allows Firefox to slightly outperform Safari when decoding JPEG XL images on desktop systems.

Apple has supported JPEG XL in stable Safari releases since 2023.

Chrome is also moving toward support. Chrome 145 and newer versions include an experimental enable-jxl-image-format flag, although Google has not enabled the format by default.

Mozilla continues expanding Firefox

The JPEG XL rollout comes as Mozilla continues making other changes to Firefox.

Firefox is now officially supported by NVIDIA GeForce NOW, while Firefox Nightly recently gained an Organize Tabs button for automatic tab grouping.

Mozilla could also switch Firefox to a two-week release cycle starting next month, which would significantly increase the pace of browser updates.

Via Neowin