How to add WebP thumbnail support on Ubuntu and Linux Mint

WebP image support in Linux

As of writing this article, on 2022 June, there is no default support for WebP images in the Ubuntu/Linux Mint file explorers. As a result, the image file thumbnails are not rendered and we have to open the image file to see what’s in it. In this tutorial, we will see how to add support for the WebP files so that the image thumbnails are generated just like any other supported image format.

What is WebP Image Format?

WebP is an image format developed specifically for the web by Google. The primary goal of the WebP format is to replace other conventional formats like JPEG, PNG, etc. and provide better compression and quality/file-size ratio. When compared to JPEG, WebP file size is 25%-34% for the comparable quality JPEG image.

Adding WebP thumbnail support

To add support for WebP images, we need to install the package named “webp-pixbuf-loader”. You can install them by executing the following commands.

#Add the PPA
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:krifa75/eog-ordissimo

#Refresh apt
sudo apt update

#Install the package
sudo apt install webp-pixbuf-loader

After the installation is done, just refresh the file-manager and you will see the thumbnails generated for the WebP images.

Webp Thumbnails shown on Nemo file manager

Image Viewer with WebP Support

Web browsers like Google Chrome can act as WebP image-viewer. However, if you are looking for image-viewer program itself with support for WebP, you can try gThumb.

How to install gThumb on Ubuntu/Mint

sudo apt install gthumb

This will install the gThum image viewer and you can use it to open WebP images.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have seen how to add native support for WebP images so that the file manager can show thumbnails for them. Also, gThumb image viewer has good support for the new WebP image standard. You might also be interested in reading the following articles.

Muhammed Afsal Villan
Muhammed Afsal Villan
https://afsalv.com
Muhammed Afsal Villan is an experienced full-stack developer, specialized in desktop and mobile application development. He also regularly publishes quality tutorials on his YouTube channel named 'Genuine Coder'. He likes to contribute to open-source projects and is always enthusiastic about new technologies.
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