How to Enable AVIF Image Support in Mozilla Firefox Browser

Seems like everyone is trying to find a replacement for the good old JPEG image format. First Apple has switched to the new HEIC image format which is a subset of the HEIF format and gives better compression than JPEG. Now Netflix is pushing a new AVIF image format that is supposed to have better compression than JPEG. The idea behind using AVIF image format is to ensure that the Netflix user interface loads faster and gives more control to their developers.

Seeing the possibility of AVIF image format’s popularity in the future with the web developers, Mozilla has decided to add support for AVIF in their Firefox web browser. In the version 77.0 of Firefox browser, you can easily enable support for the AVIF image format in the following manner:

  1. Launch Firefox web browser, enter about:config in the address bar.
  2. When the warning appears, click on the button Accept the risk and Continue.
  3. In the advanced preferences window, type image.avif.enabled in the search box.AVIF Image Support in Firefox
  4. Double-click on the preference image.avif.enabled to change its value to true.
  5. This is it, now AVIF support has been enabled in your Firefox web browser.

So now that you have enabled AVIF image format, you must be all excited and want to try the new image format? You can easily do this by visiting Netflix’s AVIF image samples link at http://download.opencontent.netflix.com/?prefix=AV1/Chimera/AVIF/.

AVIF Image Support in Firefox

Just click on any of the links on that page that leads to AVIF images. If the images are displayed in Firefox, then you have successfully enabled AVIF image support in Firefox. However, if you see nothing or Firefox keeps trying to open that image but keeps failing then you have to make sure that you followed the above instructions properly. Also make sure that you are using the latest version of Firefox since AVIF support is enabled starting from version 77.0 of Firefox.