Google Chrome 155 adds JPEG XL support using Rust for memory safety

Google has announced that the Chrome 155 browser will support the JPEG XL (.jxl) image format. This next-generation format offers 30% to 50% better compression than standard JPEG, supports HDR, and allows for lossless transcoding.

To enhance security, Google implemented the decoder using jxl-rs, a pure Rust implementation of the JPEG XL decoder. This move aims to mitigate common memory safety vulnerabilities, such as heap overflows and out-of-bounds reads, which are frequently found in decoders written in non-memory-safe languages like C++. Google reported that the Rust-based implementation passed rigorous checks, including AI reviews and fuzz testing, without discovering memory safety issues.

While AVIF remains recommended for bandwidth-sensitive scenarios with high image counts, JPEG XL is positioned as the ideal choice for high-fidelity photography and scenarios requiring fine-grained progressive decoding.