Chrome 155 Ships JPEG XL: Test It Against AVIF Before You Convert Anything

Chrome has started shipping decoding support for JPEG XL (.jxl) from version 155. Google's post claims 30 to 50 percent better compression than JPEG, plus lossless compression, built-in HDR support and lossless JPEG transcoding.

The detail we care about is the advice at the top: try both AVIF and JPEG XL, and pick per image. Google expects JPEG XL to help most with high-fidelity or lossless photographic images, and where progressive decoding matters. For portfolio and product photography, that describes a lot of what we publish.

The decoder is also worth a mention. It is jxl-rs, a pure Rust implementation, chosen because image decoders sit on a heavily attacked part of any browser. Memory safety without a speed penalty is a sensible reason to take a new format seriously.

Our approach is to keep the existing pipeline and add JPEG XL as one more source in a picture element, so browsers that cannot decode it fall back without fuss. Then compare file sizes on your ten heaviest hero images. If the saving is real, keep it. If AVIF wins, ignore the hype.