JPEG XL on iPhone and iPad
Since iOS 17, a .jxl opens like any other photo in Safari, Files and Photos. The twist most people miss: on an iPhone 16 Pro or later Pro, the camera may already be writing JPEG XL, hidden inside ProRAW .dng files. The trouble only starts when those files leave Apple's world.
by Robert Castillo · Published
The short answer
On an iPhone or iPad running iOS 17 / iPadOS 17 or later, a .jxl opens like any other picture. Apple added the format across the whole system in September 2023: Safari 17 displays it, and so do Files and Photos. Apple's own note next to the JPEG XL options in the camera settings says it plainly: JPEG XL files are supported on iOS 17 and later.
Browsers are the easy part on an iPhone. Apple requires browsers there to use its WebKit engine, apart from the alternative engines it permits in the EU and Japan, and WebKit's announcement listed JPEG XL for Safari, Safari View Controller and WKWebView on iOS 17. In practice that means Chrome, Firefox and Edge for iPhone show a .jxl exactly as Safari does, unless one of them is running its own engine under those exceptions.
On iOS 16 or earlier there's no decoder anywhere in the system. iOS 17 needs an iPhone XS, XR or newer; if yours can't update, the viewer on this site decodes the file inside Safari itself, and can save it as a JPG for you.
Where a .jxl opens on iPhone and iPad
| Where | iOS 16 or older | iOS 17 and later |
|---|---|---|
| Safari | No | Yes (still images) |
| Chrome, Firefox, Edge for iPhone | No | Yes, through WebKit |
| Files (preview) | No | Yes |
| Photos | No | Yes |
| Saving a picture as .jxl | No | No, except inside ProRAW |
One limit applies on every Apple device: Safari's JPEG XL support covers still images, not animated ones, and doesn't do progressive loading. For photographs that never comes up.
The last row matters more than it looks. Apple's apps can read JPEG XL but won't save a picture as a .jxl; the Files app's Convert Image, for instance, only offers JPEG, PNG and HEIF. The same is true on the Mac, which our Mac guide checks in detail.
Your iPhone may already be shooting JPEG XL
This is the part almost nobody knows. Since iOS 18, the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max can save ProRAW photos with JPEG XL compression, and the option is still there on the iPhone 17 Pro. Ordinary photos are unaffected: the camera's everyday choice remains High Efficiency (HEIF) or Most Compatible (JPEG). JPEG XL only appears once you shoot RAW.
Here's where to find it on iOS 27, using Apple's own wording: Settings → Camera → Formats, turn on ProRAW & Resolution Control, then tap ProRAW Format. The three options are JPEG Lossless (Most Compatible), JPEG-XL Lossless and JPEG-XL Lossy. On iOS 18 the same choice sat under Formats → Pro Default.
The files don't come out as .jxl. They're still .dng files, the raw format whose version 1.7 added JPEG XL as a compression method, with the JPEG XL data packed inside. Apple told PetaPixel that JPEG XL «is not the ideal choice for every person»; outside Apple's devices, support is still patchy.
| ProRAW Format | 12 MP | 48 MP |
|---|---|---|
| JPEG Lossless (Most Compatible) | ≈ 25 MB | ≈ 75 MB |
| JPEG-XL Lossless | ≈ 18 MB | ≈ 46 MB |
| JPEG-XL Lossy | ≈ 11 MB | ≈ 20 MB |
The first row comes from Apple's ProRAW support article; the JPEG XL rows are the estimates Apple shows on the iPhone 16 Pro, as reported by 9to5Mac. «Lossy» here doesn't mean a poor picture: MacRumors describes the option as perceptually lossless, and the file still edits like a raw.
That table solves a puzzle people bring to photography forums: two ProRAW files from the same phone, one around 75 MB and the other around 20 MB. Same camera, different ProRAW Format setting. If a 48 MP .dng from your phone weighs about 20 MB, it's almost certainly JPEG-XL Lossy.
Getting it onto a Windows PC in a form that opens
A .jxl or a JPEG XL ProRAW that opens perfectly on the iPhone can arrive on Windows as a file nothing will show. The safest rule is to convert before the file leaves the phone. In order of effort:
1. Convert it on the phone
In the Files app, touch and hold the image, choose Quick Actions → Convert Image and pick JPEG. That action has been in Files since iOS 16 and uses the system's own image decoder, so on iOS 17 or later it should take a .jxl like any other picture. If it doesn't appear for a file, our converter runs in Safari and never uploads the photo.
2. For ProRAW, share an edited copy
Apple's rules here are documented: if you edit a ProRAW photo in Photos and share it by AirDrop, Mail or Messages, a JPG with your edits is what gets sent. Mail goes further and converts any ProRAW you attach into a smaller JPG on its own.
3. If you copy with a cable
Apple's current instructions are to install the Apple Devices app from the Microsoft Store and import with Microsoft Photos. ProRAW arrives as .dng. The «Keep Originals» option under Settings → Apps → Photos controls conversion during import, but Apple documents it only for HEIF and HEVC, so don't count on it for JPEG XL.
4. If the PC really needs the raw file
A JPEG XL-compressed DNG needs software that understands DNG 1.7. LibRaw, the raw engine behind many free viewers, added it in version 0.22 in January 2026, so older tools may show only the small preview JPEG embedded in the file, or nothing. For a Windows workflow you can't update, switch ProRAW Format to JPEG Lossless (Most Compatible) before shooting.
A .jxl saved in the Files app isn't part of the camera roll, so a photo import from Windows won't see it at all; send those by another route, ideally after converting. And if the files your PC can't open end in .heic, that's a different, much more common problem with its own fix: see opening HEIC on Windows.
Sharing: what each route actually sends
| Route | What the other person gets |
|---|---|
| Mail, with a ProRAW photo | A smaller JPG: Mail converts ProRAW automatically (Apple). |
| AirDrop, Mail or Messages, with an edited ProRAW | A JPG with your edits (Apple). |
| AirDrop, unedited ProRAW | The original .dng, but only to an iPhone, iPad or Mac. Windows PCs can't receive AirDrop. |
| iCloud Photos | The full-resolution original on your own Apple devices. |
| WhatsApp, Telegram and similar apps | Not documented for JPEG XL, and we haven't tested it. Convert to JPG first. |
The pattern behind the table is simple. Apple converts for you where it has decided the other side may not cope, as Mail does with ProRAW, and passes files through untouched where it expects another Apple device. Third-party apps follow their own rules, and we haven't found any of the big messaging apps documenting what it does with JPEG XL.
So the advice for anything leaving Apple's world is the same every time: make it a JPG on the phone, then send it. It costs a few seconds and removes every guess about the other end.
What converting costs, measured
When you turn a .jxl into a JPG for someone on Windows, the file gets bigger, and people often assume something went wrong. We measured how much, using ten public-domain (CC0) photos from Wikimedia Commons taken on iPhones from the 11 to the 15 Pro. Each was re-encoded from its pixels as lossy JPEG XL at distance 1 (cjxl --lossless_jpeg=0 -d 1; distance 1 is cjxl's default for images that aren't already JPEGs), and then converted back with djxl from libjxl 0.12.0.
| Converted to | Size compared with the .jxl | SSIMULACRA2 (median) |
|---|---|---|
| JPEG, quality 90 | 1.42× larger | 86.2 — excellent |
| JPEG, quality 95 (djxl default) | 1.92× larger | 88.8 — excellent |
| Back to the original JPEG (lossless repack only) | 1.21× larger | Byte-identical, 10 of 10 |
On the SSIMULACRA2 scale published by its authors, 85 means an average viewer doesn't notice a difference comparing the images in place at 1:1, and 90 is visually lossless. A JPEG at quality 90 is therefore more than good enough to send, at just under one and a half times the size of the .jxl it came from.
Metadata depends on the tool. With djxl, the capture date, camera model, orientation, Display P3 colour profile and GPS position all survived the conversion (we checked one of the ten photos with exiftool), so a djxl copy of a photo taken at home still says where home is. The converter on this site works differently: it redraws the image in the browser, and its JPG carries no date, camera or GPS data. Whatever tool you use, the share sheet's Options let you turn off location when you send a photo from Photos.
Problems and fixes
| What happens | Why, and the fix |
|---|---|
| A .jxl shows a blank icon in Files | iOS 16 or older. Update to iOS 17 or later, or open it in our viewer in Safari. |
| On Windows, your ProRAW looks tiny or low-resolution | The app is showing the embedded preview because it can't decode JPEG XL raw data. Send a JPG, or update the raw software. |
| Your 48 MP ProRAW files suddenly shrank to about 20 MB | ProRAW Format is set to JPEG-XL Lossy. Nothing is broken; switch to JPEG Lossless (Most Compatible) if you need maximum compatibility. |
| The JPG you made is bigger than the .jxl | Normal. In our tests it was 1.4 to 1.9 times larger, depending on quality. |
| An animated .jxl doesn't move | Safari's JPEG XL support covers still images only; animation isn't implemented there. |