JPEG-XL Image Support Returns To Latest Chrome / Chromium Code
To the frustration of many developers and end-users, back in 2022 Google deprecated JPEG-XL support in Chrome/Chromium and proceeded to remove the support. That decision was widely slammed and ultimately Google said they may end up reconsidering it. In November there was renewed activity and interest in restoring JPEG-XL within Google's image web browser and as of yesterday the code was merged.
JPEG-XL image support is back in the very latest Google Chrome/Chromium codebase. Back in December they merged jxl-rs as a pure Rust-based JPEG-XL image decoder from the official libjxl organization. At the end of December they did more JPEG-XL plumbing with the enums and build flags for the support.
Now as of yesterday they wired up the JXL decoder! The jxl-rs-powered JPEG-XL image decoding is gated by the enable_jxl_decoder build flag but it's enabled by default. The decode support is wired up with proper MIME type handling (image/jxl), there is chrome://flags UI coverage, and related bits in place for handling JPEG-XL image support returning. While built by default, you may need to set chrome://flags/#enable-jxl-image-format in the interim at run-time to enjoy this JPEG-XL image decoding. That merge is in Chrome/Chromium 145.0.7632.0.
JPEG-XL image support is back in the very latest Google Chrome/Chromium codebase. Back in December they merged jxl-rs as a pure Rust-based JPEG-XL image decoder from the official libjxl organization. At the end of December they did more JPEG-XL plumbing with the enums and build flags for the support.
Now as of yesterday they wired up the JXL decoder! The jxl-rs-powered JPEG-XL image decoding is gated by the enable_jxl_decoder build flag but it's enabled by default. The decode support is wired up with proper MIME type handling (image/jxl), there is chrome://flags UI coverage, and related bits in place for handling JPEG-XL image support returning. While built by default, you may need to set chrome://flags/#enable-jxl-image-format in the interim at run-time to enjoy this JPEG-XL image decoding. That merge is in Chrome/Chromium 145.0.7632.0.