Re Preview Support for Webp images?

There is nothing in the Safari 12 — 14, or macOS 11.n release notes that mentions .webp support. You cannot assume that images supported in Safari (or other browsers) are supported in Preview. A good example of that is .svg and apparently .webp formats.

You can see the macOS supported image UTI strings by copy/pasting the following into the Script Editor and running it.

use scripting additions


set utiStr to (do shell script "python <<'EOF' - " & "
#!/usr/bin/python
# coding: UTF-8

from Foundation import NSArray
from Quartz.ImageIO import CGImageSourceCopyTypeIdentifiers

uti_array = NSArray.arrayWithArray_(CGImageSourceCopyTypeIdentifiers())
print(uti_array.componentsJoinedByString_('\\n'))")

display dialog utiStr with title "Supported Image UTI"
return

HandyMac wrote:

(This is in response to an earlier question titled "Preview Support for Webp images?" which is now locked – in case anybody else is looking for an answer.)

Downloaded an image from a Web page via Vivaldi; it appeared in Finder as a .webp file. According to ⌘I Get Info, it opens in Preview (default). Double-click the file, Preview opens, but shows nothing. Preview then shows the file under Open Recent…, but still won't open it. Same result in both Sierra and Catalina.

Downloaded the image again, in both Vivaldi and Brave (both based on Chromium), looked more closely, saw only two Format options: Google WebP and "All Files" (which produces a file without an extension that MacOS will open in TextEdit as plain text).

However, when I opened the Web page in Safari and downloaded the image, either by Save Image As… or Save Image to "Downloads", it was automatically converted and appeared in Finder as a .png (the only choice in the Save As dialog), which opened fine in Preview.

Also, when I copied the image from the Web page to the clipboard, then opened Preview and selected New from Clipboard ⌘N, it created a new Untitled document, which could then be saved as a .png.

Weird, but at least there seems to be a solution (or two). According to Wikipedia:

In early beta versions of macOS Sierra and iOS 10, Apple added WebP support, but [it] was later removed…. WebP is unsupported in macOS and iOS Safari browser version 13 or lower. However, support is being added in Safari version 14.

However, the .webp image appears just fine in Safari 12.1.2 in MacOS 10.12 Sierra, and saves as a .png (as described above), though it can't be opened in Preview. The image also appears on the Web page in Safari in iOS 12.4.8 (iPad Air), and saves to Photos (don't know in what format). So there is partial support in both OSes. Weird, but workable.

Well your macOS Sierra you are woefully out dated. Full stop.

Your WebP is an image format I never even heard of or seen prior to your post. And seems to be a Google development—how about just void it.

Like using .tiff files on the web are problematic and simple best to avoid them for example in development/design.

both Vivaldi and Brave (both based on Chromium) are Google browser, so it makes sense they would patronize themselves and there image format.

Try something different if you have issues...

I downloaded a .webp image from off the internet.

Viewable as well in both Safari and Firefox browser as a test, here: https://www.gstatic.com/webp/gallery/1.webp

It does open in Preview,app sitting on my Desktop, running Big Sur macOS 11.1

But it will not let me upload it to this ASC dialog box here, it does not recognize it as a viable image.