How To Enable Webp Support In Edge On Windows 10
The Photos app on Windows 10 is underwhelming if you compare it to the Windows Photo Viewer that came by default in Windows 7. It also pales in comparison to default photo viewers found on other desktop operating systems. For one, it doesn’t offer universal support for all, or most image file formats, out of the box. For common photo file formats, such as HEIC and HEVC formats, you have to install an extension. Google has its own image format Webp that most other browsers don’t support. You can however enable Webp support in Edge with an extension from Microsoft.
Webp Support On Edge
Install the Webp Image Extensions app from the Microsoft Store. Once it finishes installing, you will be able to view Webp Images Microsoft Edge. You must be running Windows 10 1803 in order for this extension to work.
Once installed, click the Launch button in the Microsoft Store. This will open the Movies & TV app. After that, Edge ought to be able to load Webp images however, it won’t act as a file viewer for these types of files. It will be able to display this type of image when encountered on a web page so there’s still no way to just open a Webp file on Windows 10 unless you have Chrome.
The extension claims that you will be able to open Webp images on Windows 10. It doesn’t limit the extension’s functionality to Edge however, so far, it’s limited. If it weren’t, we’d be able to open an Webp image in Photos which we can’t.
If the extension doesn’t work right away, make sure the Photos app is up to date, and restart your PC for good measure.
If you need a sample Webp image to test if the extension has installed correctly, visit the app page for any app on the Google Play Store, and download an app icon. For example, the VLC app icon ought to save as a Webp file instead of a PNG file.
Compared to macOS, Windows 10 lacks far behind with its underwhelming file support. You’d be hard put to find an even mildly popular file format that you can’t open on macOS whereas on Windows 10, you need to install codecs and extensions for lots of common file types. Even the Movies & TV app can only open some MKV files. It’s a step up from the Windows Media Player which didn’t support them at all but there are still some MKV files that it fails to play.
