What Is an AVIF File? How to Open and Convert It

AVIF stands for AV1 Image File Format. It uses the compression from the AV1 video codec, which was developed by the Alliance for Open Media, a group that includes Google, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix and Mozilla. Unlike HEIC, it is royalty free, which is a big reason websites like it.

It supports transparency, 10-bit and 12-bit color, HDR and animation, so it can replace JPG, PNG and even GIF in many cases.

At the same visual quality an AVIF photo is commonly 30 to 50 percent smaller than a JPG, and noticeably smaller than WebP too. For a website this means faster pages and cheaper bandwidth, which is why large image sites and content networks serve AVIF to browsers that support it.

The cost is encoding time. Creating an AVIF is slower than creating a JPG, and very large images can take a while.

Current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari display AVIF in web pages, and recent Android and iOS releases can open the files. The trouble starts outside the browser: older photo viewers, many image editors, print shops, email clients and upload forms still do not understand it.

That is why you will often download an AVIF from a site and then be unable to use it. The picture is fine; the program you are using just does not know the format.

Pick JPG when you want a small file that every program accepts, which is best for photos. Pick PNG when the image has transparency or sharp text and you want it lossless. Drop the file into an AVIF converter, choose the output and download the result.

A browser-based converter does the work on your device. Nothing is uploaded, so it is safe for private pictures.

If you run a site and care about speed, yes, as long as you keep a fallback. Serve AVIF to browsers that support it and WebP or JPG to the rest, using a picture element with several sources. Test the result, because very aggressive AVIF compression can smooth out fine texture such as skin or grass.