libjxl
Ranked 2 of 3 image codec libraries by recommenders
Reference JPEG XL implementation that compresses images well, especially for archiving; critics cite recurring security vulnerabilities and slow high-effort encoding.
Reference JPEG XL implementation that compresses images well, especially for archiving; critics cite recurring security vulnerabilities and slow high-effort encoding.
21 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 12
- approval share
- 43%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Strong compression for archiving
“I archive petabytes of space imagery with libjxl on maximum compression, effortlessly.”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Google unkills JPEG XL?” “they are really good at generating reasonably compact, high-quality images”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “The case against JPEG XL”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Recurring security vulnerabilities in the library
“It was an issue with the main JPEGXL library being unmaintained and possibly open for security flaws.”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Chromium Has Merged JpegXL” “libjxl had notorious bugs that would've on par with webp exploit, if present in browser”
Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “Shipping JPEG XL in Chrome” “the apps that did utilise the C based libjxl ended up hit with vulnerabilities in it”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Videolan Dav2d” - Comment from 7 Oct 2026 in “Shipping JPEG XL in Chrome”
- Comment from 19 Feb 2026 in “Ladybird: Closing this as we are no longer pursuing Swift adoption”
- Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Chromium Has Merged JpegXL”
- Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “This PNG shows a different version when opened in Chrome than in an image viewer”
Rust rewrite overtaking the C++ version
“they decided to replace the C++ libjxl with a rust version which is a WIP”
Comment from 21 Jan 2026 in “JPEG XL Demo Page” “why anyone would continue working on the c++ project once the rust one started beating it in performance”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “Firefox 157 will include JPEG XL by default on all platforms” Concerns about maintenance and stability
“It was an issue with the main JPEGXL library being unmaintained and possibly open for security flaws.”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Chromium Has Merged JpegXL” “the c version unstable and there wasn't anyone to maintain the lib”
Comment from 8 Oct 2026 in “Shipping JPEG XL in Chrome”
Other image codec libraries people recommend
The two most recommended other image codec libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 3 image codec libraries, rankedWhat people said
All 24 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“libjxl includes the brotli library, too, so it's also vulnerable to this.”
“I don’t think there was significant progress on compression between libjxl v0.10.0 and v0.12.0”
“libjxl's slow speed at efforts >7 is primarily due to an iterative evaluation-optimization loop”
“13 CVEs (6 CVEs on decoding) over five years is a moderate or good track record”
“the c version unstable and there wasn't anyone to maintain the lib”
“The original libjxl was written in C and has been riddled with security issues.”
“use the reference command line tools, preferably libjxl and cjxl”
“libjxl had notorious bugs that would've on par with webp exploit, if present in browser”
“At this point writing a media file parser in C/C++ is absurdly stupid. The same thing happened with libjxl.”
“they are really good at generating reasonably compact, high-quality images”
“it is just an uphill battle with a codec like that”
“why anyone would continue working on the c++ project once the rust one started beating it in performance”
“the apps that did utilise the C based libjxl ended up hit with vulnerabilities in it”
“Quickly followed by several vulnerabilities in that reference library as well”
“they decided to replace the C++ libjxl with a rust version which is a WIP”
“It's also a horrible API.”
“CVE-2023-0645 in libjxl that year too, and several since”
“the reference implementation of JPEG-XL isn't great”
“was getting a healthy stream of commits”
“It was an issue with the main JPEGXL library being unmaintained and possibly open for security flaws.”
“reference decoder which has some major security flaws”
“I archive petabytes of space imagery with libjxl on maximum compression, effortlessly.”
“This is all fine and good until you actually try encoding such an image with libjxl. What an absolute garbage codebase.”
“uses libjxl which is C++ and therefore cannot be used”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.