Just as we were coming to terms with the controversial decision by Google to drop support for JPEG-XL (JXL) in Chrome, Apple announced support for JXL during the WWDC June 5th livestream. That is a meaningful shift. JXL was down, but not out.
Google's decision to stop JXL support in Chrome surprised us at Peakhour, along with plenty of others who care about web performance and image delivery. Google Chrome, as the most used browser globally, often sets the course for web standards. In deciding to drop JXL, Google appeared to be exercising its dominance over those standards, and the decision drew real debate in the web community.
Apple's announcement changes the picture. Apple has long pushed high dynamic colour and high-resolution features, and Safari support is a useful signal for image delivery. By bringing JXL support to Safari, Apple is giving this promising image format a fair go.
This move also hints at wider JXL support across the entire Apple ecosystem, which includes iPad, iPhone, Mac, and Apple TV. While there are still some limitations - embedded colour profiles and animations are not yet supported in the current MacOS Sonoma beta - we hope these gaps are fixed soon.
At Peakhour, this is good news. We look forward to welcoming Apple users to our websites, where they will be able to see the quality benefits of JXL images as soon as their operating systems support it.
This turn of events gives JXL a much-needed boost. It does not undo Google's Chrome decision, but it keeps the format in play and makes the future of web image formats less settled than it looked a short while ago.
