To make websites built on WordPress faster, WordPress will now convert and serve JPG images into WebP images by default.
Well those of you who don’t know, WebP is an image file format that is 25 to 34 percent smaller in comparison to JPEG but has the same resolution.
11 years ago, Google introduced the WebP image format which is now supported by most popular browsers these days.
That means, browsers can now render WebP images.
WordPress starts supporting WebP image format with version 5.8 which means users can directly upload a WebP image in WordPress and it will serve to the browsers.
WebP is a technology developed by Google and Google has a very bad reputation for quitting a technology after a while, hence, very few users are still using the WebP images in their WordPress.
But, As I said above, WebP is 25 to 34 percent lighter than JPG which means it also renders quickly in comparison to the JPG and increases the performance of a website, since Pagespeed is now a ranking factor.
So, is there any way users don’t compromise on uploading JPG images into WordPress, however, those images will serve in WebP format to the browsers or users?
Well, so far we use different plugins to do the same task, but WordPress is now enabling a feature in its core that converts JPG into WebP by default.
We don’t need any plugins or third-party services to do this.
But do note that, this new feature is available only for new JPG uploads.
WordPress will now convert and serve all the newly uploaded JPG images into WebP to the browsers by also keeping the original JPG images in the backend.
Hence, in the future, if Google shutdown the WebP image technology then still the JPG images will remain present on the website.
One important thing to note here is that, since WordPress will store both the image format, it will use an additional ~70% of the storage space, however, will reduce the bandwidth consumption by approximately 30 percent.
While this feature is planned to be rolled out in WordPress 6.0, users who want to test this feature right now can download and install the Performance Lab Plugin and then enable the WebP uploads module.
