How to add WebP support to Eye of GNOME?

Question

WebP image files are becoming more and more common on the web. Eye of GNOME (eog) doesn't support it out-of-the-box. Some browsers do, and ImageMagick as well by just installing the webp package (magick/convert -list format).

A simple search leads to webp-pixbuf-loader, but might be not that easy for beginners to find and follow that instructions.

How can I add WebP support to Eye of GNOME?

References

Old issue on Bugzilla: Bug 700751 – Support of images in format "WebP" in EOG.
Newer issue on GitLab: Cannot open WebP file.

eog uses GDK-PixBuf, which does not provide support for most formats itself (due to maintainability), but instead has support for formats added by the libraries that actually implement the image format. Currently libwebp, the library in question, does not provide any loader for GDK-PixBuf, but the linked repository (https://github.com/aruiz/webp-pixbuf-loader) provides one.
Downstream on Launchpad on gdk-pixbuf (duplicated on libwebp) and eog.
On Debian
- David Heidelberg / webp-pixbuf-loader · GitLab.
- #907306 - configure: error: gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders not found in path - Debian Bug report logs.

Pablo Bianchi · Answer 1 · 2023-05-08T11:41:14.530

For Ubuntu 22.04

sudo apt install webp-pixbuf-loader

For Ubuntu 20.04

Follow these steps to add support for WebP to Eye of GNOME:

Prebuild

sudo apt install git meson ninja-build
cd /tmp/
git clone https://github.com/aruiz/webp-pixbuf-loader
cd webp-pixbuf-loader/
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/*/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders /usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders  # https://github.com/aruiz/webp-pixbuf-loader/issues/9#issuecomment-537437407

Build on Debian/Ubuntu

meson builddir -Dgdk_pixbuf_query_loaders_path=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders
ninja -C builddir

Install
```
sudo ninja -C builddir install
```

Test

wget -O /tmp/samplefile.webp "https://www.gstatic.com/webp/gallery/1.sm.webp"
eog /tmp/samplefile.webp

Default app for .webp extension (image/webp internet media type)

From EOG issue eog.desktop doesn't include webp mimetype:

After installing https://github.com/aruiz/webp-pixbuf-loader eog loads webp images properly... but it is still not added as supported mime type to the .desktop file and, as a consequence, is not offered by default to open those images

To fix this:

# Get info                                        
#   If you didn't go through above steps:
wget -O /tmp/samplefile.webp "https://www.gstatic.com/webp/gallery/1.sm.webp"
xdg-mime query filetype /tmp/samplefile.webp      # MIME type of the file: image/webp
xdg-mime query default image/webp                 # .desktop filename of the application which is registered

# Set open .webp with eog
xdg-mime default org.gnome.eog.desktop image/webp # Ask the desktop environment to make application the default
                                                  # application for opening files of type mimetype: Search on
                                                  # ~/.local/share/applications/ (user-wide) or /usr/share/applications/ (system-wide).
sudo update-mime-database /usr/share/mime         # Apply system-wide

# Test
xdg-open /tmp/samplefile.webp

Of course, change org.gnome.eog.desktop to whatever you want.

Ubuntu 22.10 ship WebP support out-of-the-box^[1]. For 22.04 you can use a PPA (if you trust in the developer).

I can't believe that there still isn't a `.deb` package with this that one can just install, without the need to build it from source. — raj, Nov 15 '21 at 22:17
`meson` failed to build until I installed `libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev libwebp-dev` (Ubuntu 20.04). — balver, Dec 22 '21 at 07:01
it seems that the `libwebp-dev` package is also a required dependency — Nmath, Mar 17 '22 at 09:37
The `ln`-step is not necessary when you give the loader path when building. As Nmath, I had to install `libwebp-dev` and also `libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev`. — hife, Nov 07 '22 at 17:04
Finally, I had to symlink/move ´libpixbufloader-webp.so´ from `/usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders` to `/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/2.10.0/loaders`, then run `sudo /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders --update-cache` to make it work. — hife, Dec 09 '22 at 10:39

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 14 '23 at 11:40

3

I found this OMG! Ubuntu! article: How to Add WebP Support to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

Just add the ppa:helkaluin/webp-pixbuf-loader PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:helkaluin/webp-pixbuf-loader

Then install webp-pixbuf-loader:

sudo apt install webp-pixbuf-loader

and you're done. Works for me on Ubuntu 20.04.

edited Feb 14 '23 at 11:40

BeastOfCaerbannog

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answered Nov 16 '22 at 16:51

Bastian Gebhardt

31
2

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 14 '23 at 11:23

3

Ubuntu 22.04

You simply need to install webp-pixbuf-loader and make EOG the default program for webp extensions.

sudo apt install webp-pixbuf-loader

Ubuntu 20.04

For previous versions of Ubuntu you can add ppa:helkaluin/webp-pixbuf-loader PPA and proceed similarly.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:helkaluin/webp-pixbuf-loader
sudo apt update
sudo apt install webp-pixbuf-loader

answered Feb 14 '23 at 11:23

Seppo Erviälä

5,555
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Great! Now if there was also one for .avif ...! – artfulrobot Mar 15 '23 at 14:34

mkiuchi · Answer 4 · 2022-08-20T06:14:49.003

0

These dependent packages should be installed.

sudo apt install libwebp-dev libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev libgtk-3-dev meson build-essential

then, build and install like this.

git clone https://github.com/aruiz/webp-pixbuf-loader
cd webp-pixbuf-loader/
meson builddir -Dgdk_pixbuf_query_loaders_path=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gdk-pixbuf-2.0/gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders
ninja -C builddir
sudo ninja -C builddir install

edited Aug 20 '22 at 06:14

answered Aug 20 '22 at 06:12

mkiuchi

11
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