A current Mac can open WEBP files in Quick Look, Preview and Safari. If another app or upload form rejects the file, convert it to JPEG for a photo or PNG for an image with transparency, text or sharp edges. Both conversions can happen locally on your Mac.
Conversion is still useful because older editors, document templates, print workflows and upload forms may not accept WEBP. The file is valid; the destination simply expects JPEG or PNG.
Convert one WEBP file with Preview
Open it in Preview, choose File, Export, and pick JPEG or PNG. Choose PNG if the image has transparency, or is a diagram, logo or screenshot with hard edges. Choose JPEG if it is a photograph. This is a real conversion, so a WEBP that came off a web page at 200 KB will typically leave as a noticeably larger JPEG.
Batch-convert WEBP files on a Mac
Finder can do it: select them all, right-click, then Quick Actions, Convert Image. You get a format and a size, but no quality control. The Terminal route works too:
for f in *.webp; do
sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 82 "$f" --out "${f%.webp}.jpg"
doneOr drop the folder into Image Converter, which reads WEBP alongside HEIC and AVIF, converts the batch to JPEG, PNG or HEIC at a quality you set, and writes the copies beside the originals or into a folder you pick.
Why Preview may not offer WEBP as an export format
Every method on this page converts out of WEBP, and none of them converts into it. That is not an oversight. ImageIO, the image machinery macOS provides to applications, reads WEBP but does not write it, so no app built on the system frameworks can offer WEBP as an output without shipping Google's encoder itself. If you specifically need to produce a WEBP, use a tool built around that encoder, such as the cwebp command-line utility or an image editor that bundles it.
FAQ
Why do websites give me WEBP instead of JPG?
Because it is roughly 25 to 35 per cent smaller than JPEG at the same visual quality, which is a large saving on a page full of images. Browsers have supported it for years, so sites serve it by default and fall back to JPEG only for browsers that need it.
Can Photoshop open WEBP?
Recent versions can, natively. Older ones need a plugin, and that mismatch is the single most common reason someone goes looking for a WEBP converter in the first place.
Should I convert WEBP to JPG or PNG?
PNG for anything with transparency, flat colour or text: logos, icons, diagrams, screenshots. It is lossless, so nothing degrades, though the file will be large. JPEG for photographs, where it is far smaller and the loss is invisible. Converting a photograph to PNG produces an enormous file for no benefit.
Does converting WEBP to JPG lose quality?
Slightly. The WEBP was already lossy, and encoding it as JPEG is a second lossy pass over an image that has been through one. At quality 80 or above the difference is not visible in a photograph. Converting to PNG loses nothing, at the cost of a much bigger file.
