Back in 2022 Google deprecated and then removed JPEG-XL image support from the Chrome/Chromium browser codebase and now in 2026 it’s back. Last month I wrote about JPEG-XL decoding merged back to Chromium/Chrome and that has rolled out today as part of today’s Chrome 145 stable debut.
Google today announced Chrome 145 being pushed out to the stable channel across Windows, macOS, and Linux systems. Most exciting is JPEG-XL decoding support returning to the Blink engine. Google is using the Rust-based jxl-rs decoder rather than the C++ libjxl library for better memory safety. For the Chrome 145 release the feature is gated by the enable-jxl-image-format flag.
Chrome 145 also adds support for the text-justify CSS property, column wrapping support in multicol, device bound session credentials, an SQLite backend for IndexedDB, reduced user-agent strings by default, Upsert, and other enhancements.
More details on the Chrome 145 features for those interested via the ChromeStatus.com blog.
