The Mountain (background)
Dan Sorensen
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Oh Apple, why can't we use the brilliant WebP Image format?

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    Dan Sorensen
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Google released the WebP image format in 2010 with better compression, both lossy and lossless, transparency, and animation over older formats. Your site will load faster and look better using WebP over a gif image or highly-compressed JPG file.

Unfortunately, a new image format requires updated software. Your creative workflow might have trouble reading and exporting WebP. Your clients might be stuck on a Macintosh purchsaed in 2019 that has not yet been updated for WebP support. In the decade since WebP's introduction, it has been adopted widely among browsers except for Apple, which just recently made the switch.

Can I Use WebP Images

Source: Can I use WebP? (2/8/2022)

As of 2022, WebP is fully supported on all major browsers except Internet Explorer and Safari for MacOS. Internet Explorer is not surprising as it is rapidly winding down. Apple's mobile Safari did not support WebP until version 14 was released on September 2020. Partial support for desktop Safari was added in version 14, but it is limited to Big Sur and later.

So Mac users will need to use the Chrome browser for full WebP support until Safari catches up.