---
title: "JPEG XL Now Works in Chrome, but Not in Google Images or Discover"
description: "Chrome 155 displays JPEG XL images, but Google Images and Discover previews do not support them. Keep a JPEG, WebP or AVIF fallback in the img tag."
tldr: "JPEG XL, an image format Chrome began displaying with version 155 in October 2026, is not supported in Google Images or as a Discover preview, John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, said on 15 October. A JPEG XL file served as a source inside a picture element still works, because Google reads the fallback in the img tag. That fallback, and the og:image and schema.org image Discover uses for previews, need a format Google lists, such as JPEG, WebP or AVIF."
publishDate: 2026-10-22
author: "Liam Hayward"
---
Chrome 155, which reached Chrome's stable channel on 6 October 2026, displays JPEG XL (`.jxl`) images. Chrome's team says the format compresses 30 to 50% better than JPEG and recommends testing it alongside AVIF. Google Search has not followed. "If you're hoping to get images shown in Google Images & as previews in Discover, etc - JPEG-XL is currently not supported," John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google, posted on Bluesky on 15 October. Google's image documentation lists the formats it supports in an `<img>` tag's `src` as BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG and AVIF.

If you adopt JPEG XL for its file sizes, add it as a `<source>` inside a `<picture>` element and keep one of the listed formats in the `<img>` `src`. Asked by Barry Pollard, a web performance developer advocate on Google's Chrome team, whether Search handles that fallback, Mueller replied: "The picture element includes an img element, so that would work for any search engine (or other page parsing setup)." Google's image documentation says the same: it finds images in an `<img>` `src` even inside a `<picture>` tag. A step that can go wrong is an image pipeline that converts everything to `.jxl`, because it can also rewrite the `og:image` and schema.org `image` URLs that Google's Discover documentation says can influence the preview image. Keep those on a listed format too.

Plan for the fallback to stay. The last new format was slow to follow: Chrome began displaying AVIF in version 85 in August 2020, and Google Search announced support for it in August 2024.

## Sources

- [John Mueller on JPEG XL in Google Images and Discover, Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/johnmu.com/post/3mxw5yrrd322v)
- [Image SEO best practices, Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-images)
- [Google Discover documentation, Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-discover)
- [JPEG XL in Chrome, Chrome for Developers](https://developer.chrome.com/blog/jpeg-xl-in-chrome)
- [AVIF Image Decode, Chrome Platform Status](https://chromestatus.com/feature/4905307790639104)
- [Supporting AVIF in Google Search, Google Search Central Blog (August 2024)](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/08/happy-avifriday)
- [Google Images & Discover Previews Don't Support JPEG XL, Search Engine Journal](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-images-discover-previews-dont-support-jpeg-xl/593816/)