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How to convert WebP to JPG

Renaming the file to .jpg does not work, and here is exactly why. These are the methods that do, on Windows, Mac and in the browser.

Updated 2026-08-04

You saved an image from a website and got a .webp file that your editor, your printer or an upload form will not accept. Converting it is a two-minute job with software you already have, and there is no need to hand the file to a random website.

First, the thing almost everyone tries.

Renaming it to .jpg does not work

Change photo.webp to photo.jpg and one of three things happens: the program reports a damaged or unsupported file, it shows nothing at all, or on Windows you get a warning about changing the extension and then the first outcome anyway.

The reason is that the extension is a label, not the content. It tells the operating system which program to open the file with. It has no effect on the bytes inside, and the bytes inside are still WebP.

Programs that read images do not trust the extension. They read the first few bytes, known as the magic number, and identify the format from those:

WebP    52 49 46 46 ?? ?? ?? ?? 57 45 42 50    "RIFF....WEBP"
JPEG    FF D8 FF
PNG     89 50 4E 47 0D 0A 1A 0A

A decoder handed a file called photo.jpg looks for FF D8 FF, finds RIFF, and stops. It is doing the right thing. If it trusted extensions instead, every mislabelled file would produce garbage rather than an error message.

Real conversion means decoding the image to raw pixels and re-encoding those pixels as JPEG. That is what all the methods below do. If it helps to know what you are converting away from, what WebP is explains why sites send the format in the first place.

On Windows: Paint

Paint has read and written WebP since the Windows 10 and 11 updates, and it is on every machine.

  1. Right-click the file, Open with, Paint.
  2. File, Save as, JPEG picture.
  3. Choose a location and save.

Paint offers no quality setting, which for a one-off is fine. For batches, the Photos app can also export, and IrfanView or XnView will convert a whole folder in one pass.

On Mac: Preview

  1. Double-click the file. Preview opens WebP on Big Sur and later.
  2. File, Export.
  3. Set Format to JPEG. A quality slider appears. Around 80 percent is the sensible default.
  4. Save.

For several files at once, select them all in Finder, press Return to open them together in Preview, select all thumbnails in the sidebar, then File, Export Selected Images.

Recent macOS versions also offer a Finder shortcut: select the files, right-click, Quick Actions, Convert Image, then pick JPEG. It writes copies alongside the originals, which is the behavior you want. The same shortcut is the quickest route for converting HEIC to JPG on a Mac.

In the browser

Any tool that decodes an image and re-encodes it as JPEG will do the job, including ones that are not sold as converters. The image compressor here accepts a WebP, decodes it with the browser’s own image pipeline, and writes JPEG — its purpose is hitting an exact file size, but the output is a plain JPEG either way. Nothing is uploaded, which matters more than it sounds for photographs of documents, receipts and anything with a face in it.

Avoid the generic upload-and-convert sites for anything private. They work, but you have handed a stranger’s server a copy of your file to save yourself thirty seconds.

Stopping the problem at the source

Two habits reduce how often you deal with this at all.

Copy the image instead of saving it. Right-click, Copy image, then paste directly into Paint, Preview, a document or a chat window. The browser hands over decoded pixels rather than the WebP file, so there is nothing to convert.

Check whether the site has the original. Many sites serve WebP to browsers but keep a JPEG at a nearly identical URL. Opening the image in its own tab sometimes reveals it.

What to expect from the result

The file will usually be larger. WebP is roughly a quarter to a third more efficient than JPEG, so the same picture takes more room as a JPEG. That is the price of the file opening everywhere.

Some quality is lost, and it is not worth worrying about once. WebP is already lossy, so re-encoding to JPEG is a second lossy pass over data that has been through one. At a reasonable quality setting the difference is invisible. What does show is repetition: converting back and forth, or converting an image that has already been through several rounds, accumulates visible mush. Convert once, from the best copy you have, and keep the result.

Transparency disappears. WebP supports an alpha channel and JPEG does not, so a transparent background becomes white or black depending on the converter. If the image is a logo or an icon, export it to PNG instead. JPEG is the wrong target for anything that needs to sit on top of a background, as JPG vs PNG sets out in more detail.

Animated WebP will not convert cleanly. An animated WebP is a sequence of frames, and JPEG holds exactly one image. Most converters silently keep the first frame. If you wanted the animation, you need a GIF or a video, not a JPEG.