What is a AVIF file?
AVIF (AV1 Image File Format) stores a single frame of AV1 video, the royalty-free codec from the Alliance for Open Media, whose members include Google, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft. The format was finalised in 2019.
AVIF is usually the smallest of the common web formats at a given quality: often noticeably smaller than WebP and much smaller than JPG, with fewer blocky artefacts at low sizes. It supports transparency, animation, HDR and wide colour. The costs are slow encoding (saving an AVIF takes far longer than a JPG) and patchy support outside browsers: plenty of editors, office apps and upload forms still reject it.
AVIF at a glance
| Full name | AV1 Image File Format |
|---|---|
| File extensions | .avif |
| Created by | Alliance for Open Media (Google, Netflix, Apple, Microsoft and others) |
| Introduced | 2019 |
| Compression | Lossy or lossless (AV1); often smaller than WebP at the same quality |
| Transparency | Yes |
| Animation | Yes |
| Opens on | Chrome 85+, Firefox 93+, Safari 16+; many desktop apps and upload forms cannot open it yet |
| Best for | The smallest high-quality images on the web |
How to open a AVIF file
Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari 16 or later display AVIF: drag the file into a browser tab. Windows 11 Photos opens it with the AV1 extension installed. To use an AVIF image somewhere that refuses it, convert it with AVIF to JPG or AVIF to PNG.