How to add WebP support to Eye of GNOME

WebP image files are becoming more and more common on the web. Eye of GNOME (eog) doesn't support it out-of-the-box. Some browsers do, and ImageMagick just installing webp package (magick/convert -list format).

A simple search let you to webp-pixbuf-loader but might be not that easy for beginners.

Reference

• Old issue on Bugzilla: Bug 700751 – Support of images in format "WebP" in EOG.

• Newer issue on GitLab: Cannot open WebP file.

  eog uses GDK-PixBuf, which does not provide support for most formats itself (due to maintainability), but instead has support for formats added by the libraries that actually implement the image format. Currently libwebp, the library in question, does not provide any loader for GDK-PixBuf, but the linked repository (https://github.com/aruiz/webp-pixbuf-loader) provides one.

• Downstream on Launchpad on gdk-pixbuf (duplicated on libwebp) and eog.

• On Debian

  • David Heidelberg / webp-pixbuf-loader · GitLab.
  • #907306 - configure: error: gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders not found in path - Debian Bug report logs.

Follow these steps to add WebP support to Eye of GNOME:

1. Prebuild

   sudo apt install git meson ninja-build
   cd /tmp/
   git clone https://github.com/aruiz/webp-pixbuf-loader
   cd webp-pixbuf-loader/
   sudo ln -s /usr/lib/*/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders /usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders  # https://github.com/aruiz/webp-pixbuf-loader/issues/9#issuecomment-537437407
   

2. Build on Debian/Ubuntu

   meson builddir -Dgdk_pixbuf_query_loaders_path=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf- 2.0/gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders
   ninja -C builddir
   

3. Install

   sudo ninja -C builddir install
   

4. Test

   wget -O /tmp/samplefile.webp "https://www.gstatic.com/webp/gallery/1.sm.webp"
   eog /tmp/samplefile.webp
   

Default app for .webp (image/webp internet media type)

From EOG issue eog.desktop doesn't include webp mimetype:

After installing https://github.com/aruiz/webp-pixbuf-loader eog loads webp images properly... but it is still not added as supported mime type to the .desktop file and, as a consequence, is not offered by default to open those images

To fix this:

# Get info
xdg-mime query filetype /tmp/samplefile.webp      # MIME type of the file: image/webp
xdg-mime query default image/webp                 # .desktop filename of the application which is registered

# Set open .webp with eog
xdg-mime default org.gnome.eog.desktop image/webp # Ask the desktop environment to make application the default application for opening files of type mimetype: Search on ~/.local/share/applications/ (user-wide) or /usr/share/applications/ (system-wide).
sudo update-mime-database /usr/share/mime         # Apply system-wide

# Test
xdg-open /tmp/samplefile.webp

Of course, change org.gnome.eog.desktop to whatever you want.

See also

• Cannot open 90% of recently saved images (webp format)
• Which image-viewers in linux support the `webp` image format?
• URL protocol handlers in basic Ubuntu Desktop
• The promissing format JPEG-XL/JXL is supported by ImageMagick's jpeg-xl

I found this OMG! Ubuntu! article: How to Add WebP Support to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Just add the ppa:helkaluin/webp-pixbuf-loader PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:helkaluin/webp-pixbuf-loader

Then install webp-pixbuf-loader:

sudo apt install webp-pixbuf-loader

and you're done. Works for me on Ubuntu 20.04.

Ubuntu 22.04

sudo apt install webp-pixbuf-loader

Ubuntu 20.04

For previous versions of Ubuntu you can add ppa:helkaluin/webp-pixbuf-loader PPA and proceed similarly.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:helkaluin/webp-pixbuf-loader
sudo apt update
sudo apt install webp-pixbuf-loader