You right-click an image on a web page, choose Save image as, and Edge hands you a .webp file when you wanted a JPG. Now nothing you own opens it cleanly — your image editor balks, the file won’t drop into a document, and you’re three clicks deep in a converter for what should have been a one-second download.
Before the fix, one correction that actually matters, because it points you at the right solution: Edge is not “forcing” anything. This is the framing all over the support forums — “Edge is forcing me to save as WebP” — and it sends people hunting for an Edge setting that mostly doesn’t exist. What’s really happening is that the website served a WebP image, and Edge saved exactly what it received. That distinction is the whole game, because it tells you the reliable workarounds aren’t about changing Edge’s mind — they’re about changing what the server sends you, or converting after the fact.
Why it happens (the honest mechanism)
Modern browsers tell websites which image formats they accept. When Edge requests an image, it advertises that it can handle WebP and, increasingly, AVIF. Many sites respond by serving the most efficient format the browser claims to support — WebP, because it’s roughly 25–35% smaller than JPEG at comparable quality, which means faster page loads. Google pushed WebP precisely to speed up the web, and it largely worked.
So when you save the image, you save the WebP the server chose to send. The image you saw as a JPEG on your old website may now genuinely be served as WebP by your host or CDN, even though the original you uploaded was a JPEG. That’s not Edge meddling — it’s content negotiation doing what it was designed to do. Annoying, but not a bug, which is exactly why there’s no clean “save everything as JPG” button waiting to be flipped.
There’s a newer wrinkle worth flagging: AVIF. Over the past couple of years Edge and other Chromium browsers added AVIF support, and sites have started serving that too. So the format you’re fighting may now be .avif rather than .webp — even more poorly supported by older desktop software, and the same root cause. Everything below applies to both.
The fix, ranked by reliability
There is no single official toggle that cleanly disables this, and the edge://flags experiments people cite are unreliable — they appear and disappear between versions and often don’t do what the forum post claimed. So here are the approaches that actually work, in the order I’d try them.
1. Reload the page in Internet Explorer mode (most reliable, no installs)
This is the best-kept secret for this problem and it needs nothing installed. IE Mode doesn’t advertise WebP or AVIF support, so when a page loads in it, the server falls back to serving JPEG, PNG, or GIF — the formats you actually want. Then you save the image as normal and get the original format.
To set it up: open Edge Settings, go to Default browser, and turn on “Allow sites to be reloaded in Internet Explorer mode.” Then on the page with the image, click the three-dot menu and choose “Reload in Internet Explorer mode.” Right-click the image, Save image as, and it should come down as JPG or PNG.
It’s an extra step per page, but it’s free, built in, and reliable.
One honest caveat: Internet Explorer mode is a compatibility feature on a long, slow road to retirement. Microsoft has committed to supporting IE mode in Edge for some years yet, but it is not forever. If you build a daily workflow on this trick, know that it’s borrowed time — useful now, not a permanent guarantee. For a permanent setup, a vetted extension (option 3) is the more future-proof habit.
A clarification: this isn’t about screenshots or copy-paste
If you take a screenshot of an image, or right-click and choose Copy image and then paste it into an editor, you sidestep the whole problem — you’re capturing pixels, not downloading the server’s chosen file, so format negotiation never enters into it. The catch is that copying re-encodes and you lose the original quality and any transparency. It’s a fine quick fix for “I just need to see this image somewhere usable,” and a bad idea if you need the actual original. The WebP problem is specifically a Save image as problem, which is worth remembering when you’re deciding which workaround fits.
2. The “Search the web for image” trick (zero setup, one-off)
For a single image, right-click it and choose “Search the web for this image” (or the visual-search option). Edge opens a results page where the image is typically presented in its original format — you can save it from there as a JPG. Clumsy, but instant when you just need one picture and don’t want to touch settings.
3. A right-click “save as type” extension (convenient, but vet it)
Extensions like “Save image as Type” or “Save Image as PNG” add a right-click option to save in JPG, PNG, or GIF regardless of how the image was served — they convert on the fly. The honest caveat: these are third-party extensions, several have mixed-to-poor user reviews and inconsistent reliability, and on a locked-down corporate machine you may not be allowed to install them at all. Useful if you save images constantly and want it frictionless, but check current reviews before trusting one, and don’t grant an unknown extension broad permissions casually.
4. Inspect the image URL (technical, but precise)
WebP is often just a converted delivery of an original that still exists on the server. Open the image in a new tab, look at the URL, and you can sometimes strip a format parameter (like ?format=webp or a .webp suffix) to request the original. Hit-and-miss depending on how the site is built, but when it works it gets you the true original with no conversion loss.
5. The registry MIME edit (advanced, system-wide, do with care)
There is a registry approach that changes how Windows associates the WebP MIME type, found under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\image/webp, editing the extension value. I’m listing it for completeness, not recommending it — it’s a system-wide change with side effects, it doesn’t reliably do what people hope across all sites, and it’s the kind of edit that’s easy to get wrong. If you’re tempted here, you’re better served by option 1.
6. Just convert it afterwards (sometimes the sane choice)
If you’ve already got a folder of .webp files, batch-convert them. Browser-based converters handle WebP and AVIF to JPG/PNG without uploading or installing anything, and tools like IrfanView or XnView convert in bulk locally. For a backlog, converting once and moving on beats fighting every download.
When you should just accept WebP
Here’s the contrarian bit: if your only problem is that one specific old program won’t open WebP, the better long-term fix may be the program, not the browser. Windows itself supports WebP thumbnails and viewing (via the free WebP Image Extensions in the Store on older builds; natively on current ones), and any modern image editor handles it fine. WebP is smaller and perfectly good quality — the format isn’t the villain, the patchy support in legacy desktop software is. If you find yourself converting every single image purely to feed an ancient editor, it might be time to retire the editor.
But if you need universal compatibility today — dropping images into documents, sending them to people on unknown software, feeding tools that only speak JPG — then yes, get the original format. IE Mode is the cleanest route, the search trick is the fastest one-off, and a vetted extension is the most convenient if you do this all day.
WebP is one of three modern formats Office and Windows handle unevenly. If iPhone photos are also giving you grief, see HEIC on Windows 11; if it’s vector graphics misbehaving in your documents, SVG behaviour across Office apps covers that fight.
Last verified: May 2026, against current Edge and Windows 11 builds.