# libjxl

9 Hacker News commenters recommended libjxl and 12 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Reference JPEG XL implementation that compresses images well, especially for archiving; critics cite recurring security vulnerabilities and slow high-effort encoding.

## Why people recommend it

- Strong compression for archiving (2 comments): "I archive petabytes of space imagery with libjxl on maximum compression, effortlessly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46118553)) "they are really good at generating reasonably compact, high-quality images" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49692193))

## What people warn about

- Recurring security vulnerabilities in the library (7 comments): "It was an issue with the main JPEGXL library being unmaintained and possibly open for security flaws." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46598479)) "libjxl had notorious bugs that would've on par with webp exploit, if present in browser" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49991691)) "the apps that did utilise the C based libjxl ended up hit with vulnerabilities in it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47992167))
- Rust rewrite overtaking the C++ version (2 comments): "they decided to replace the C++ libjxl with a rust version which is a WIP" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46711709)) "why anyone would continue working on the c++ project once the rust one started beating it in performance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49441408))
- Concerns about maintenance and stability (2 comments): "It was an issue with the main JPEGXL library being unmaintained and possibly open for security flaws." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46598479)) "the c version unstable and there wasn't anyone to maintain the lib" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50001054))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Jpegli](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jpegli.md): 13 recommend
- [jxl-rs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jxl-rs.md): 8 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "libjxl", https://hackerapproved.com/p/libjxl/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).