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Welcome to Henkan (Japanese for “conversion”) — your lightweight, high-performance solution for next-generation image optimization in WordPress!
Slow loading times and heavy images are a thing of the past. Henkan seamlessly integrates into your WordPress dashboard, silently converting your standard JPEGs and PNGs into highly optimized WebP or AVIF files. Boost your Core Web Vitals, improve your SEO rankings, and save massive amounts of server bandwidth without sacrificing an ounce of image quality.
<h3>✨ Why choose Henkan?</h3>
Most image optimizers rely on slow PHP processing or expensive cloud APIs with monthly limits. Henkan is built differently: It prioritizes native OS binaries (<code>cwebp</code>, <code>avifenc</code>) to process images blazingly fast directly on your own server, completely free and without any restrictions.
<h3>🚀 Powerful Features</h3>
<ul>
<li>Next-Gen Formats: Instantly convert images to WebP and AVIF formats.</li>
<li>Zero-Config Auto-Conversion: New images are optimized silently in the background the moment you upload them.</li>
<li>1-Click Bulk Optimization: Got a massive existing media library? Process thousands of images with a single click in our beautiful, modern dashboard.</li>
<li>Smart Fallbacks: Uses ultra-fast <code>exec()</code> binaries when available, falling back to GD or ImageMagick seamlessly if needed.</li>
<li>Cache Auto-Clear: Fully compatible with WP Rocket, W3 Total Cache, Autoptimize, and LiteSpeed Cache. Conversions automatically trigger a cache purge.</li>
<li>Frontend Delivery: Automatically serves the optimized images to compatible browsers using modern HTML <code><picture></code> tags or Nginx/Apache rewrites.</li>
<li>WP-CLI Power: Built-in commands (<code>wp henkan convert</code>) for sysadmins to process massive libraries directly from the terminal without PHP timeouts.</li>
<li>Global Ready: 100% translation-ready. Shipped with English, German (<code>de_DE</code>), and Japanese (<code>ja</code>) out of the box.</li>
</ul>
<h3>🛠️ System Requirements</h3>
To unleash the full speed of Henkan, we recommend: 
* WordPress: 6.0 or higher 
* PHP: 7.4 or higher 
* For WebP: <code>cwebp</code> installed on the server (recommended) OR PHP <code>GD</code> extension with WebP support. 
* For AVIF: <code>avifenc</code> or <code>ImageMagick</code> (magick/convert) installed OR PHP <code>GD</code> extension with AVIF support.

Henkan – WebP & AVIF Converter

Henkan is a high-performance plugin that automatically converts your media library images to next-generation formats like WebP and AVIF.

WordPress.org

This plugin adds WebP and AVIF support for media uploads within the WordPress application. By default, AVIF images will be generated if supported on the hosting server, otherwise WebP will be used as the output format. When both formats are available, the output format can be selected under <code>Settings > Media</code>. Modern images will be generated only for new uploads, pre-existing images will only converted to a modern format if images are regenerated. Images can be regenerated with a plugin like <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/regenerate-thumbnails/" rel="ugc">Regenerate Thumbnails</a> or via WP-CLI with the <code>wp media regenerate</code> <a href="https://developer.wordpress.org/cli/commands/media/regenerate/" rel="nofollow ugc">command</a>.
By default, only modern image format sub-sizes will be generated for JPEG or PNG uploads – only the original uploaded file will still exist as a JPEG/PNG image, generated image sizes will be WebP or AVIF files. To change this behavior, there is a checkbox in <code>Settings > Media</code> “Output fallback images” that – when checked – will result in the plugin generating both the original format as well as WebP or AVIF images for every sub-size (noting again that this will only affect newly uploaded images, i.e. after making said change).
This plugin was formerly known as WebP Uploads.

Modern Image Formats


I love that it doesn't force you to generate all image sizes of the original format and avif, but just does the avif (or webp if you choose that). It would be really nice if it could rework old images, and maybe even modify the database to match. But still, excellent and should be installed first thing on all new WP sites in my opinion.


Easiest way to get AVIF images


Thanks for developing this plugin!It's my #1 plugin for image optimization!


So far so good!

Converts images to more modern formats such as WebP or AVIF during upload.

Henkan – WebP & AVIF Converter vs Modern Image Formats