Disclosure: Save Image As Type is ours, and this blog is published by the same people. Anything said here about our own software is written by an interested party. Route 1 below is our own extension, and its limit is stated where it applies: it converts an image on a web page, so a file already sitting in your Downloads folder needs Route 2 instead. Routes 2 and 3 are tools we have nothing to do with.
Why does nothing on your computer open a .avif file?
You right-clicked a photo on a page, chose Save image as…, and what landed
in your Downloads folder ends in .avif. On the page it looked like any other
image. On your desktop it has a blank icon, the Photos app says it cannot open
it, the upload form rejects the file type, and the person you sent it to asks
whether you can “just send a normal picture.”
Nothing is broken. Your browser and your computer are two different pieces of software with two different lists of formats they understand, and AVIF is on one list and not the other. Browsers added AVIF display support years ago - Chrome 85, Firefox 93, Safari 16.1, and Edge as recently as 121.[1] Windows did not. The codecs actually built into Windows are BMP, DDS, DNG, GIF, HD Photo, ICO, JPEG, JPEG XR, PNG and TIFF; everything past that list, HEIF and WebP and the AV1 family included, arrives only as an extension codec you have to install from the Microsoft Store.[2] On macOS the line falls in a different place: 13 Ventura and later preview AVIF in Finder and open it in Preview, and anything older shows you a generic document icon.
So the file is fine, and the machine you saved it to has no idea what it is. JPG is the format that never has this problem, which is why converting is the practical answer rather than arguing with the software.
The one thing that will not solve it is the browser’s own save dialog. It writes the bytes the server sent and performs no conversion at all - that is why there is no format list in it, and it is the same wall that makes WebP downloads unopenable for exactly the same reason.
Route 1: right-click the image and save it as JPG
If the image is still on a page you can reach, this is the shortest route and nothing leaves your device.
- Install Save Image As Type for Chrome, Firefox or Edge
- Right-click the AVIF image on the page
- Choose Save Image As Type, then Save as JPG
The decode step is your browser’s own AVIF decoder - the same one that drew the image on screen a second ago - so the rule of thumb is simple: if you can see it, it can be converted. From there the image is drawn onto a canvas and re-encoded as a JPG on your device, at 95% quality by default, adjustable in Settings. No upload, no server, no account.
This direction is also the fast one. Going the other way, saving a web image as AVIF, costs the better part of a second per image, because AVIF compression does an enormous amount of work per pixel. Decoding is cheap and JPG encoding is cheap, so AVIF to JPG is instant - the wait you may have read about belongs to the opposite conversion.
Several extensions add format options to the right-click menu and we compare four of them, including ours.
Route 2: the AVIF file is already on your disk
An extension works on images on a web page. A file already saved to your Downloads folder is a different job, and it needs something installed:
- macOS, 13 Ventura or later: open it in Preview, then File > Export and pick JPEG. Nothing to install.
- Windows: install the free AV1 Video Extension from the Microsoft Store, which is how AV1 decoding reaches the Photos app and Paint at all. Then open the file in Paint and use File > Save as > JPEG. This is the same shape of fix as the WebP Image Extension for Windows Photos, and it has the same catch: on a managed work machine the Store is often blocked.
- ImageMagick, if you have it:
magick input.avif output.jpg. - ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -i input.avif output.jpg. - GIMP, in recent versions, opens AVIF and exports JPG through File > Export As.
If the file came from a page you can still get back to, Route 1 on the live image is less work than any of these.
Route 3: an online converter
Upload the AVIF, download a JPG. It works on a machine where you cannot install anything, which is a real advantage.
The cost is that the image goes to a server you do not control, gets converted there, and is kept for however long the terms you did not read say. Whether that matters depends entirely on the picture. A meme is a meme. A photograph of a document, a medical scan, a picture with a face in it, or anything from a private album is a decision about who else gets a copy. We went through what online converters actually do with your files in detail, including the free tiers that are metered per day and stop halfway through a folder.
What converting to JPG quietly changes
Three things, and all three are the JPG format rather than any particular tool.
Transparency becomes a flat colour. AVIF carries an alpha channel through an auxiliary bitstream alongside the image,[4] and JPG has no alpha channel at all, so something has to go behind the see-through parts. The standard’s own default is black, not white: “For image types that do not support an alpha component, the serialized image must be the bitmap image composited onto an opaque black background.”[3] Save Image As Type fills the canvas white before drawing, so a logo with a transparent background comes out on a white rectangle instead of a black one - better, but still not the original. If the transparency matters, the answer is PNG, and the WebP-to-JPG guide covers that choice in full.
An animated AVIF becomes one frame. AVIF stores image sequences as well as single images,[4] and a JPG can hold exactly one picture. Which frame you get is not a setting: the decode step every canvas-based converter uses is pinned by the standard to “the default image of the animation … or, if there is no such image, the first frame.”[5] It is frame one, every time, and the extension says so in a notification with a Save the original instead button next to it. The same rule, and the ways around it, are the whole story of saving a frame from an animated GIF.
The image is re-encoded, not repackaged. A lossy AVIF decoded and written out as a lossy JPG has been through two lossy compressors rather than one. At the default 95 this is invisible at normal viewing size; at 60, on a photograph with a lot of fine detail, it is not. If the JPG is the copy you are keeping, leave the quality high and let the file be big.
Expect the JPG to be several times larger
AVIF is far more efficient than JPG at the same apparent quality. On 21 August 2026, on an Apple M3 Pro, we encoded one 6 megapixel photograph three ways at settings that look the same side by side - the same measurement the saving as AVIF article reports in full:
| Format | File size |
|---|---|
| AVIF, quality 50 | 156 KB |
| WebP, quality 85 | 469 KB |
| JPG, quality 85 | 759 KB |
Those are three encodes of one original rather than a round trip, but the ratio is what converting hands you: a JPG somewhere around four to five times the size of the AVIF it came from. That is the price of the thing you are converting for: a file that opens on a fifteen-year-old laptop, in a print shop’s workflow, and in every upload form ever written.
If size does matter for a particular file - you are emailing it, or a form has a 2 MB limit - the JPG quality setting is the lever, and dropping from 95 to 85 usually halves the file for a difference you have to look for.
Which route should you use?
| Route | Works on | Image leaves your device | Needs installing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Right-click, Save as JPG | Images on a web page | No | A browser extension |
| Preview / Paint / ImageMagick / ffmpeg | Files on disk | No | A desktop app or codec |
| Online converter | Either | Yes | Nothing |
The question that decides it is not what you are converting, it is where the file is. Still on a page: right-click it and skip the download-then-convert round trip entirely. Already on disk: use the tool your operating system already has, and on Windows accept that one free Store extension is the price of Explorer showing you the thumbnails too. On a locked-down machine with nothing installable and a picture you would not mind a stranger keeping: an online converter, knowingly.
And if what actually brought you here is the broader version of this problem - modern web formats landing in your Downloads folder and refusing to open - the WebP problem, end to end is the same story with the format everybody hits first, and saving an image as AVIF on purpose is the case for going the other way once you know what it costs.
Sources
- MDN: Image file type and format guidePrimary source
That AVIF display support arrived in Chrome 85, Firefox 93, Safari 16.1 and Edge 121, and that the format supports an alpha channel and animated frames. Read .
- Microsoft Learn: WIC codecs from MicrosoftPrimary source
That the image codecs built into Windows are BMP, DDS, DNG, GIF, HD Photo, ICO, JPEG, JPEG XR, PNG and TIFF, and that anything else - HEIF, WebP and the AV1 family included - arrives only as an extension codec downloaded from the Microsoft Store.
- HTML Standard, 4.12.5.5 Serializing bitmaps to a filePrimary source
That "for image types that do not support an alpha component, the serialized image must be the bitmap image composited onto an opaque black background using the source-over compositing operator" - the default any canvas-based converter inherits when it writes a JPG, and the reason filling the canvas first is a deliberate step rather than a detail.
- AV1 Image File Format (AVIF), Alliance for Open MediaPrimary source
That "the AV1 Image File Format also supports transparency (alpha) ... through auxiliary AV1 bitstreams", and that it stores image sequences as well as single image items - the two AVIF capabilities a JPG cannot receive.
- HTML Standard, 8.11.2 The ImageBitmap interfacePrimary source
That "if this is an animated image, imageBitmap's bitmap data must only be taken from the default image of the animation ... or, if there is no such image, the first frame of the animation" - why converting an animated AVIF returns one frame rather than a choice of frames.
