Convert WebP to PNG on Mac

1. Open the WebP in Preview. If it opens in your browser instead, right-click it and choose Open With > Preview.
2. Choose File > Export…
3. Set Format to PNG, pick a folder, and click Save.

To change many at once, open them together, select all the thumbnails in the sidebar, then File > Export Selected Images and choose PNG. Preview needs no add-ons because macOS reads WebP natively.

Yes, with the built-in sips:

sips -s format png image.webp --out image.png

# every WebP in the folder
for f in *.webp; do sips -s format png "$f" --out "${f%.webp}.png"; done

Google’s dwebp (from brew install webp) also works: dwebp image.webp -o image.png. See the sips command guide for more.

Yes. We converted a lossless WebP of a red circle on a transparent background. sips reported hasAlpha: yes on the PNG, and exiftool listed the color type as “RGB with Alpha.” dwebp gave the same result. PNG is the right target when you need a transparent logo for a program that does not take WebP.

If you want a white background instead, flatten it. With ImageMagick: magick logo.png -background white -flatten flat.png. In our test the result reported hasAlpha: no.

PNG is lossless, and a lossy WebP photo has to be expanded to full pixel data. Our measurements:

The photo grew about 27 times and the logo about 6.6 times. The PNG does not recover detail lost in the WebP; it just stores the already-compressed result without further loss. If you only need a format that opens everywhere and the picture is a photo, WebP to JPG gives a far smaller file. Reserve PNG for transparency, screenshots and graphics.

PNG here means a still image. We built a three-frame animated WebP (400 × 300, 44,146 bytes) and ran it through sips. It wrote one PNG of 180,437 bytes, not three, so the animation is gone. If you need the motion, convert to a video or GIF instead; our GIF to MP4 guide covers the video route. To pull out every frame as separate PNGs, ImageMagick’s magick anim.webp frame-%d.png is the usual tool.

Usually because something refuses WebP: an upload form, an older design or office app, a print shop, a slide deck. PNG is accepted nearly everywhere and handles transparency. If the destination takes a JPG and the image has no transparency, see PNG to JPG on Mac for the next step, or JPG to PNG for the other direction.

Preview and sips handle WebP to PNG for free, and a sips loop beats any app on speed. For a handful of files, use them.

Smol earns its price on mixed folders (WebP, AVIF, HEIC and JPG together), on avoiding Terminal, and on a Finder right-click that keeps files on your Mac. Choose PNG as the output and each file gets a copy beside the original, originals untouched by default. If the PNGs come out too big, Smol can compress them too, but PNG is always re-encoded rather than kept pixel-identical. Smol is $29, once, for one Mac. Compare options in the best image converter for Mac, or see HEIC to JPG for iPhone files.