WebP Encoder/Decoder for Golang

WebP Encoder/Decoder for Golang based on libwebp tools.

Requires cwebp and dwebp to be installed on your system. This library wraps the command-line tools and does not download binaries automatically.

Requirements

• Go 1.25 or later
• cwebp and dwebp command-line tools installed on your system

Install

go get github.com/nickalie/go-webpbin

Installing webp tools

Debian/Ubuntu:

apt-get install webp

Alpine:

apk add libwebp-tools

macOS (Homebrew):

brew install webp

Windows:

Download prebuilt binaries from the official WebP site and add the bin/ directory to your PATH.

Environment variables

Name	Default	Description
VENDOR_PATH	(empty)	Directory containing cwebp/dwebp binaries. If unset, binaries are resolved via system PATH.

Example of usage

package main

import (
	"image"
	"image/color"
	"log"
	"os"
	"github.com/nickalie/go-webpbin"
)

func main() {
	const width, height = 256, 256

	// Create a colored image of the given width and height.
	img := image.NewNRGBA(image.Rect(0, 0, width, height))

	for y := 0; y < height; y++ {
		for x := 0; x < width; x++ {
			img.Set(x, y, color.NRGBA{
				R: uint8((x + y) & 255),
				G: uint8((x + y) << 1 & 255),
				B: uint8((x + y) << 2 & 255),
				A: 255,
			})
		}
	}

	f, err := os.Create("image.webp")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	if err := webpbin.Encode(f, img); err != nil {
		f.Close()
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	if err := f.Close(); err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

CWebP

CWebP is a wrapper for cwebp command line tool.

Example to convert image.png to image.webp:

err := webpbin.NewCWebP().
		Quality(80).
		InputFile("image.png").
		OutputFile("image.webp").
		Run()

DWebP

DWebP is a wrapper for dwebp command line tool.

Example to convert image.webp to image.png:

err := webpbin.NewDWebP().
		InputFile("image.webp").
		OutputFile("image.png").
		Run()

Migrating from earlier versions

This version removes automatic binary downloading. The following breaking changes apply:

• SetSkipDownload() removed -- no longer needed since binaries are never downloaded.
• DetectUnsupportedPlatforms() removed -- no longer needed since all platforms require system-installed tools.
• SKIP_DOWNLOAD env var removed -- no longer recognized.
• LIBWEBP_VERSION env var removed -- the library no longer manages webp versions; your system package manager controls the installed version.
• VENDOR_PATH default changed from .bin/webp to empty (binaries resolve via system PATH).

If you previously relied on automatic downloading, install cwebp and dwebp via your system package manager before upgrading.

Building libwebp from source

If your platform doesn't provide prebuilt webp packages, you can build libwebp from source:

apk add --no-cache --update libpng-dev libjpeg-turbo-dev giflib-dev tiff-dev autoconf automake make gcc g++ wget

wget https://storage.googleapis.com/downloads.webmproject.org/releases/webp/libwebp-1.5.0.tar.gz && \
tar -xvzf libwebp-1.5.0.tar.gz && \
mv libwebp-1.5.0 libwebp && \
rm libwebp-1.5.0.tar.gz && \
cd /libwebp && \
./configure && \
make && \
make install && \
rm -rf libwebp