AVIF at Five: Powering a Faster, Sharper Web Experience
When the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia) introduced the AV1 Image File Format (AVIF) in 2019, it stepped into a landscape dominated by legacy formats that had shaped the web’s visual language for decades. As AOMedia celebrates ten years of driving open media innovation, AVIF stands out as one of its clearest success stories — reshaping how images are delivered and experienced online. Five years after its launch, AVIF is reshaping expectations for what still images on the web can be — smaller, sharper, and better suited for today’s bandwidth realities.
The Storage and Transport Formats Working Group, where AVIF has been developed, has clear goals: ensure AOMedia standards integrate seamlessly into the broader media ecosystem, enable interoperability across platforms, and support the practical deployment of open media technologies. “It’s basically to glue AOMedia standards in with other standards,” explained Thomas Daede, Principal Video Engineer at Vimeo and a co-chair of the group.
“Our group handles the specifications for how media gets stored and moved — from metadata and container formats to aspects like HDR, synchronization, and codec integration,” added Dimitri Podborski, Multimedia Standards Engineer at Apple and the second co-chair of the working group. “It’s what makes AOMedia’s codecs practical in the real world, whether it’s packaging video or still images in a way that works across devices and platforms.”
From Concept to Real-World Use
The first version of AVIF was finalized in 2019. This was quickly followed by version 1.1.0 in 2022, which added HDR image properties (including support for HDR video thumbnails). Since then the group has continued to improve AVIF with additional features and functionalities. The next version — version 1.2.0 — is expected to be published soon, and adds, among others, support for sample transforms. Sample transforms make it possible to achieve higher bit depths even when a codec doesn’t natively support 16-bit or higher. “That is a nice addition for creators who want to push image quality further,” said Podborski.
Beyond the specification documents, the true measure of AVIF’s success is its adoption — and in this regard, the momentum is evident. With support across major web browsers and operating systems, AVIF has crossed an important threshold: practical ubiquity. It’s a rare achievement for any new image format, and it unlocks real benefits for developers and end users alike.
Why It Matters
As web content grows more visual — and more bandwidth-hungry — efficient compression matters. AVIF dramatically reduces file sizes while preserving rich details. The addition of HDR properties in version 1.1.0 has also enabled AVIF to handle the more demanding needs and capabilities of HDR content, an essential functionality in the current multimedia ecosystem. The impact is immediate: lighter websites that load faster, consume less mobile data, and deliver richer visuals.
“The main thing is that it has increased the speed of website loads and shrunk the size of websites,” Daede explained. “You can either choose to make your site smaller or boost image quality — most people have gone the smaller site route, so pages pop up faster and use less data.”
In practice, that means a better user experience whether someone is browsing using gigabit fiber or a congested cellular network. And the benefits aren’t abstract: major platforms, including Vimeo, are seeing AVIF usage climb steadily. “The percentage of AVIF has gone way, way up,” Daede said. “It’s significant.” As of late 2023, the company reported that about ⅔ of images served on Vimeo were AVIF.
Looking Ahead
The next evolution is already on the horizon. As work on the next generation codec progresses, the working group is laying groundwork for AVIF version 2.0, which will integrate future codec improvements and respond to community needs. “One of the group’s primary goals is to make the next version of AVIF fully equipped for future use cases — especially with the next generation codec,” Podborski said. “We’re asking: How do we expand metadata support and improve alignment with related standards for media packaging and delivery? We’re looking at the features web developers really want, so AVIF stays the best choice for modern image workflows.”
Beyond the web, AVIF’s influence is also expanding into new domains. It’s now a component of the Alliance for OpenUSD (Universal Scene Description), supporting 3D workflows where efficient, high-quality images are essential.
Taken together, these milestones affirm that AVIF is more than an incremental upgrade — it’s becoming the practical modern image format the open web needs. For AOMedia, that’s exactly the point: technology that delivers, scales, and stays free for anyone to build on.