What is an AVIF file?

AVIF (AV1 Image File Format) is an image format based on the AV1 video codec. It was published in 2019 by the Alliance for Open Media, a group of technology companies that develops royalty-free media formats. Like WebP, it's mostly used to make images on websites smaller.

What AVIF is good at

• Small files. AVIF usually compresses photos into smaller files than JPG, and often smaller than WebP, at similar visual quality.
• Rich color. It supports high dynamic range (HDR), wide color and more than 8 bits per channel.
• Transparency and animation, like WebP.

The trade-off is speed: AVIF images take longer to create than JPG or WebP, which matters little for a few images but adds up for large batches.

Where AVIF files work

All current versions of the major web browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari) display AVIF images. Support in desktop apps, photo editors, office software and upload forms is still patchy, so an AVIF file you saved from a website may not open where you need it.

How to open or convert an AVIF file

• To view it, drag the file into a current web browser.
• To use it anywhere, convert it with AVIF to JPG. For other output formats, use the image converter, which also writes PNG and WebP.

The converters run in your browser, so your images aren't uploaded.

AVIF, WebP or JPG?

For a website, AVIF and WebP both make pages faster than JPG, and current browsers support both. For sending images to people, printing, or uploading to forms, JPG is still the safe choice because everything opens it. See WebP vs PNG vs JPG for websites for more.