It’s surprisingly easy to enable WebP support in Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, letting you see image thumbnails in the file manager and open WebP images in the default image viewer.
How to Add WebP Support to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
It’s made possible but the wonderful open source webp-pixbuf-loader library. You install it, restart any/all apps that can use it, and bam: WebP images appear right in front your window peepers (aka your eyes – I could’ve just said eyes).
I wrote a put up on the way to permit WebP Linux help on omg! linux however that manual become tailor-made toward parents on Fedora, or Arch-primarily based totally distros —no, now no longer due to the fact I’ve grew to become towards Ubuntu, however due to the fact, on the time, it wasn’t smooth to put in webp-pixbuf-loader on Ubuntu with out constructing it from supply
And ain’t no person were given time for that.
Thankfully, because then, some matters have happened.
First, a committed third-birthday birthday celebration PPA containing the webp-pixbuf-loader package deal has popped up. This PPA does the hardworking for us, making the webp-pixbuf loader library to be had for easy set up on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
You add the PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:helkaluin/webp-pixbuf-loader
Then install the library:
sudo apt install webp-pixbuf-loader
And then restart Nautilus, Eye of GNOME, and other GTK apps and —ta dah— working WebP support.
WebP Support in Ubuntu 22.10
This WebP-toting sandwich library this put up concerns? It’s now blanketed with inside the Ubuntu archive for 22.10, that means no PPA are required to get it.
Ubuntu 22.10 may also even deliver with WebP help enabled out-of-the-field (that means you won’t need to exit of your manner to put in some thing to get excellent thumbnail previews in Nautilus, et al). This library become made a dependency of the eye-on-gnome package deal some weeks back, aleven though this become later reversed because the webp-pixbuf library isn’t but in Ubuntu’s “main” repo.
Still, it’s probably that out-of-the-field help for this open-supply picture layout will appear earlier than later in a raft of distros because the layout is choosing up extensive steam.
So there you've got got it: WebP help in Ubuntu, prepared to roll now, or in some months in case you opt to wait.
