WordPress Core Committer Adam Silverstein has revealed that the upcoming WordPress 6.5 will have AVIF support. This modern image format brings substantial improvements in both image quality and compression, surpassing traditional formats such as JPEG, PNG, and even WebP.
What is AVIF?
AV1 Image File Format, the next-gen image format based on the AV1 video encoding format, was created and developed by the Alliance for Open Media, a consortium formed by Mozilla, Google, Cisco, Netflix, Amazon, and other companies. AVIF is royalty-free supports high dynamic range (HDR) and other modern imaging techniques and.
AVIF scores over traditional JPEG, WebP and other formats in image quality and compression. AVIF images significantly reduce file sizes, leading to faster page load times and reduced bandwidth consumption. They also seamlessly integrate with WordPress’s responsive images, Fetch Priority, and lazy loading features by default. It is also compatible with all major browsers.
Using AVIF images
Starting with WordPress 6.5, users can upload and use AVIF images just like they would with JPEG or PNG images, provided their hosting service supports AVIF.
Developers can use the image_editor_output_format filter to transform uploaded JPEG images to AVIG format. The next option is to use image editing tools that support AVIF exporting or use command line conversion tools or web based tools like Squoosh and then upload the images to WordPress.
AVIF support depends on the web server’s image processing library. Currently, Multisite has limitations regarding allowed file types for individual sites.
WordPress had added WebP support in WordPress 5.8.