The file is not broken. WebP won't open because the program you are double-clicking it with was built before anyone expected to open WebP outside a browser. You have two fixes: convert the file to a format your software understands — our WebP to JPG converter does it in your browser, nothing uploaded — or update to software that reads WebP natively. Which one is right depends on how often this happens to you. Here is the full picture.
Why this problem is everywhere
Google released WebP in 2010 (the birth of WebP has the backstory), and for most of the format's life it lived inside Chrome and nowhere else. Safari did not support it until Safari 14 in 2020 — a full decade later. Desktop software moved even slower, because WebP decoding was never part of the operating system image libraries that apps lean on.
The result is a weird asymmetry: websites love WebP because it saves them bandwidth, so they serve it constantly, while the software on your computer was never in a hurry to catch up. You end up holding a file the web produces and the desktop refuses. The web image formats guide explains why websites keep choosing WebP anyway.
The quick fix: convert to JPG
If you just need this one file to open, conversion is the five-second answer. Drop the WebP into the WebP to JPG converter, and you get a file that every image viewer, office suite, and upload form on earth accepts. The conversion happens locally — the file never leaves your machine — and you can drag in a whole folder at once if a website dumped a pile of WebP files on you. The step-by-step is in how to convert WebP to JPG.
One exception: if the image has a transparent background — a logo, a sticker — JPG will flatten it onto white. Convert to PNG instead with the WebP to PNG converter, which keeps the transparency. The companion guide on converting WebP to PNG covers when each target makes sense.
Platform by platform
Windows. On Windows 10 and 11, the current Photos app opens WebP after updates, and Edge renders it natively. On older Windows — 7, 8, or an unpatched early Windows 10 — nothing built in will touch it. Your options there are conversion or a third-party viewer.
macOS. Preview opens WebP from macOS 11 Big Sur onward, the same generation that brought Safari 14. On Catalina and older, Preview treats the file as an unknown document. Conversion is usually less painful than an OS upgrade for one file.
Photoshop. Native WebP support arrived in Photoshop 23.2, released in February 2022. Anything older needs Google's free WebPShop plugin, or you convert first. If installing plugins on a work machine is not your call to make, converting to PNG keeps full quality and transparency for editing.
Older Android and messaging apps. Android has decoded WebP since version 4.0, so the OS itself is rarely the problem — but apps that bundle their own image handling can be. Some messaging and social apps re-encode or reject WebP in ways that vary by version and region. Saving a converted JPG sidesteps all of it.
Linux. Any distribution with a recent gdk-pixbuf or Qt image stack already reads WebP. Minimal or older installs may need the webp-pixbuf-loader package before the default viewer cooperates.
Old CMSs and web software. If your site runs an aging CMS, its media library may reject WebP uploads entirely. That is the same support gap viewed from the other side — our guide on fixing WebP upload errors goes deeper.
The other route: make your software understand WebP
If WebP files land on your desk regularly, updating beats converting:
- Update the OS. Current Windows 10/11 and macOS Big Sur or later both open WebP out of the box.
- Update Photoshop to 23.2 or newer, or install WebPShop on older versions.
- Switch the default viewer. Most actively maintained image viewers added WebP years ago.
The trade-off is real, though: updates take admin rights and time, plugins stop being maintained, and none of it helps the person you forward the file to. If the recipient's software is the bottleneck, converting before you send is the only fix that travels with the file.
If Chrome keeps handing you WebP files
Half this problem is how the file arrived: Chrome saves images in the format the site serves, which is increasingly WebP. If you would rather stop collecting them in the first place, how to stop Chrome saving WebP covers the options on that side.
For the file sitting unopened on your desktop right now: drop it into the converter and you will have a JPG a few seconds later — one that opens in everything.