Manatee

How to convert WEBP to JPEG on a Mac

· 6 min read

On macOS Monterey and later, right-click the WEBP file in Finder, choose Quick Actions, then Convert Image, and pick JPEG. Preview does the same job with File, Export, and offers a quality slider, and the built-in sips command converts a whole folder from Terminal. Manatee handles WEBP to JPEG as well, and is the practical choice when the folder also contains HEIC, AVIF, PNG, or other formats you want unified. Two things to know first: JPEG has no transparency, so transparent areas become a solid color, and an animated WEBP yields only its first frame.

Why you keep ending up with WEBP files

WEBP is a web image format designed to be smaller than JPEG and PNG at similar quality. Most large websites serve it to browsers that support it, which now means all of them. So when you save an image from a product page, a news site, or a search result, you get a .webp even though the site’s own upload was probably a JPEG.

macOS has understood WEBP since Big Sur: Finder shows thumbnails, Quick Look previews it, and Preview opens it. The trouble starts when you try to use the file somewhere else. Older image editors, many upload forms, some email clients, and most printing services still expect JPEG or PNG. Hence the conversion.

Option 1: the Finder quick action

This is the fastest route and needs nothing installed. It is available on macOS 12 Monterey and later, which is also the minimum for Manatee.

  1. Select the WEBP file in Finder. You can select several at once.
  2. Right-click and choose Quick Actions, then Convert Image.
  3. Set Format to JPEG.
  4. Choose an Image Size: Actual Size keeps the dimensions, while the other presets scale the image down.
  5. Leave Preserve Metadata ticked to keep any embedded data, or untick it to drop it.
  6. Click Convert to JPEG.

A new .jpeg file appears alongside each original. The quick action offers no quality control; it picks a sensible default. If you need a specific quality or file size, use Preview or sips.

Option 2: Preview, with a quality slider

Preview gives you control over compression and can batch export.

For one image:

  1. Open the WEBP in Preview.
  2. Choose File, then Export.
  3. Set Format to JPEG. The Quality slider appears; around three quarters of the way along is a good balance of size and sharpness for photos.
  4. Name the file, pick a folder, and click Save.

For a folder of images:

  1. Select all the WEBP files in Finder and press Command-O. They open in a single Preview window with a thumbnail sidebar (if they open in separate windows, choose View, then Thumbnails, and drag the windows together, or set Preview’s settings to open groups of files in the same window).
  2. Click in the sidebar and press Command-A to select every thumbnail.
  3. Choose File, then Export Selected Images.
  4. Click Options, set Format to JPEG and the quality, choose a destination folder, and click Choose.

Preview writes the JPEGs and leaves the WEBP files where they were.

Option 3: sips in Terminal

sips is a built-in image processing command. It reads WEBP on Monterey and later and writes JPEG with a quality setting.

  1. Open Terminal (Applications, Utilities).
  2. Type cd with a trailing space, drag the folder onto the window, press Return.
  3. Convert one file:
sips -s format jpeg "photo.webp" --out "photo.jpg"
  1. Convert every WEBP in the folder, at a quality of 85 percent:
for f in *.webp; do sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 85 "$f" --out "${f%.webp}.jpg"; done
  1. To resize on the way, add -Z 2000 to cap the longest side at 2000 pixels.

sips is quick and scriptable. Its one awkwardness is that it gives no feedback beyond the file name, so check the results in Finder.

Option 4: Manatee, for mixed image folders

A downloads folder rarely contains only WEBP. It has WEBP from websites, HEIC from an iPhone, AVIF from newer sites, PNG screenshots, and the occasional TIFF. Manatee accepts all of those, plus camera raw formats, and converts the lot to JPEG in one drop.

  1. Open Manatee and choose Convert.
  2. Drag the files or the folder into the window, or onto the menu bar icon.
  3. Pick JPEG as the target.
  4. Each file becomes a job in the list with progress. The JPEGs are written alongside the originals; nothing is modified or deleted.

Manatee runs entirely on the Mac. No upload, no account, no telemetry; the only network call is a license check. It is free for 24 hours with every feature, then $9 once.

What Manatee will not do: it is not an image editor, so it does not crop, resize, or retouch, and it does not remove backgrounds. It converts the file as it is. For the companion case of iPhone photos, how to convert HEIC to JPEG on a Mac covers the details, and how to convert AVIF images to JPEG on a Mac handles the newest web format.

Transparency, animation, and quality

These three trip people up more than the conversion itself.

Transparency. WEBP supports a transparent background; JPEG does not. Every converter has to fill the transparent area with something, usually white, sometimes black. If the image is a logo, a sticker, or a product cutout, convert to PNG instead of JPEG. Preview, the quick action, sips, and Manatee all offer PNG.

Animation. WEBP can be animated, the way a GIF is. JPEG cannot. Converting an animated WEBP gives you a still of the first frame. If you want the motion, convert to GIF (Manatee offers GIF as a target) or to MP4 with ffmpeg.

Quality. WEBP from a website is already lossy. Converting to JPEG compresses it again, and the two codecs discard different details, so a JPEG quality setting of 85 to 90 is the range to use if you care about the image. Going to 100 makes a much larger file with no visible benefit; going below 70 starts to show blocky artifacts in smooth areas. The WEBP is the better copy to keep if you might convert again.

A WEBP saved from a website is also likely to be a scaled-down version of the photographer’s original, so converting it does not magically restore resolution. Check the pixel dimensions with Command-I in Finder before expecting a print-quality result.

Questions

Can I just rename .webp to .jpg? No. The data inside is still WEBP, and any program that checks the contents will refuse it or show a broken image. A real conversion re-encodes the pixels.

The file is called .webp but Preview says it is a JPEG, or the other way around. Websites sometimes serve one format under another’s extension. Finder’s Get Info shows the real type under Kind. sips, Preview, and Manatee look at the contents, so the conversion works regardless; you may simply already have a JPEG.

Does converting remove location data and camera information? Not automatically. If the WEBP carried EXIF data, the JPEG inherits it, unless you untick Preserve Metadata in the quick action. For images you are about to post, how to strip EXIF data from photos on a Mac covers the options, and Manatee’s Clean mode removes GPS and camera EXIF in one step.

Preview will not open the WEBP at all. On Catalina or earlier, macOS cannot read WEBP; upgrade or use a tool that bundles its own decoder. On Big Sur and later, a WEBP that will not open is probably truncated from an interrupted download. Downloading it again is the fix. Manatee’s Repair mode is built for video, PDF, and Word documents, so do not count on it for a damaged WEBP; a fresh download is the realistic route.