Apple's iOS 16 Safari browser adds support for AVIF format images

Today Apple began to roll out the official version of iOS 16 to consumers. Important updates include features such as a redesigned lock screen, improved notifications and passwords, but there is another relatively small feature worth a visit. carry. The Safari 16.0 browser released with iOS 16 now finally supports AVIF format images.

AVIF is an image format such as JPEG, PNG, GIF, and WebP. It was developed by the Open Media Alliance, whose members include Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Huawei, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Nvidia, Samsung, and Tencent.

AVIF provides many functions, such as lossy and lossless compression and multiple color spaces. The main benefit the end user gets is that it can significantly save bandwidth utilization, which will also lead to better performance when browsing the web.

While Microsoft Edge doesn't support AVIF images at all, Chrome has supported it since desktop version 85 and Android version 97. Likewise, Firefox support has been active in this area since version 93 was released last year.

Safari 16.0 on Apple's iOS 16 can now also handle AVIF images, with support for macOS 13 Ventura and iPadOS 16 coming next month. Hopefully, this latest addition will push Microsoft to put more effort into this area as well.