Firefox 157 will include JPEG XL by default on all platforms

With both Firefox and Chromium using jxl-rs (Rust-based), I wonder what Apple will do about the libjxl (C++) they already shipped. I know they're doing some memory-safety with Swift, but are they shipping any Rust in their platforms so far? I also wonder if anyone's done benchmark comparisons between both libs.

--

Also, I was under the impression that after backtracking, Chromium was relying on Mozilla to come up with a Rust port, but it seems it was the reverse. Good on Google Research.

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2026/08/intent-to-ship-jpeg-xl/

> So, we laid down a challenge to the JPEG XL team at Google Research: Build a safe, performant, compact, and compatible JPEG XL decoder in Rust, and we’ll ship it. That challenge was met; Google Research built jxl-rs, and it’s the core of our JPEG XL support in Firefox.

Re: Firefox 157 will include JPEG XL by default on all platforms

#6

Post by ChoosesBarbecue » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 6:52 PM UTC

Another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49421758

Re: Firefox 157 will include JPEG XL by default on all platforms

#7

Post by etatoby » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 6:52 PM UTC

yboris wrote: post #2

I'm curious how many HN people in 2026 have not yet heard of JPEG XL / jxl

I have only heard of it in passing. I wonder what it adds beyond Webp and Avif.

Re: Firefox 157 will include JPEG XL by default on all platforms

#8

Post by modeless » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:04 PM UTC

Gander5739 wrote: post #3

Chrome appears to be doing the same: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/-gDoj...

This is awesome! All it took was a Rust implementation I guess?

Re: Firefox 157 will include JPEG XL by default on all platforms

#9

Post by masfuerte » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:13 PM UTC

tosti wrote: post #4

yboris wrote: post #2

I'm curious how many HN people in 2026 have not yet heard of JPEG XL / jxl

I'm curious why a PDF with a jxl in it takes ages to load.

If you're in a browser without native support maybe they implemented a jxl decoder in javascript.

Re: Firefox 157 will include JPEG XL by default on all platforms

#10

Post by Macha » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 7:19 PM UTC

etatoby wrote: post #7

yboris wrote: post #2

I'm curious how many HN people in 2026 have not yet heard of JPEG XL / jxl

I have only heard of it in passing. I wonder what it adds beyond Webp and Avif.

The big feature over other new formats is compatibility with legacy JPEGs. You can (simplified) take the raw data from a legacy JPEG, reformat it as a JPEG XL, and achieve like 20-30% filesize savings without any actual re-encode, just better packaging of the same data. While converting them to AVIF or webp is a lossy re-encode, and so loses quality. I think it's really this feature that has people wanting it still despite the support for AVIF.

Also webp is IMO subjectively worse at the same file sizes than the other two. Dunno if there's any studies on it to back that up though. It also has a max image size that is plausibly a problem in some use cases (16k in one dimension) while AVIF is 65k per axis and JXL 1M per axis.