Chrome 155 Ships JPEG XL with Rust Decoder
Original: Shipping JPEG XL in Chrome
Why This Matters
Broad Chrome support could finally push JPEG XL adoption across the web.
Chrome 155 will support JPEG XL (.jxl) image decoding, offering 30-50% better compression than JPEG, HDR support, and lossless JPEG transcoding, with a new Rust-based decoder for memory safety.
Google is shipping JPEG XL decoding support in Chrome 155, bringing a next-generation image format to the world's most-used browser. The format promises 30-50% better compression than standard JPEG, native HDR support, lossless compression, and lossless JPEG transcoding—making it particularly well-suited for high-fidelity photography and progressive rendering use cases. Google recommends testing both AVIF and JPEG XL to find the best fit per use case, noting JPEG XL shines at lossless and high-quality photographic content.
A central part of the effort was security. Rather than adapting an existing C++ decoder, the Chrome team built jxl-rs, a pure Rust implementation of the JPEG XL decoder. Image decoders sit on one of the browser's most exposed attack surfaces—processing untrusted binary data directly from the network inside the renderer process. C++ decoders have historically introduced out-of-bounds reads, heap overflows, and use-after-free vulnerabilities. By writing the decoder in Rust, Chrome eliminates that class of memory-safety bugs at the source, before sandboxing even comes into play. The team also invested heavily in performance to ensure the Rust implementation is fast, not just safe.