README

Drop-in Downloader replacement for spatie/laravel-medialibrary that converts every remote image into WebP on the fly while it is being downloaded.

Unofficial plugin. Not affiliated with Spatie.

How It Works

• Implements Spatie's Downloader interface — registers as the media_downloader in config/media-library.php
• Inherits the SSL & User-Agent behaviour of DefaultDownloader, then re-encodes the temp file as WebP using spatie/image (the same library media-library uses internally)
• Reads Spatie's existing media-library.image_driver config (gd, imagick, or vips) — no extra wiring required, no extra dependencies pulled in
• Non-image payloads (PDF, video, archives) and configured skip MIME types pass through untouched

Requirements

• PHP ^8.3
• Laravel ^12.0 | ^13.0
• spatie/laravel-medialibrary ^11.0 | ^12.0
• spatie/image ^3.0 (already installed transitively by media-library)
• The PHP extension matching media-library.image_driver — ext-gd, ext-imagick, or libvips for vips

Installation

composer require x-laravel/spatie-medialibrary-webp-downloader

There is no service provider — wiring happens through Spatie's own config.

Setup

Edit config/media-library.php and swap the downloader binding:

use XLaravel\Spatie\MediaLibrary\WebpDownloader\WebpDownloader;

return [
    // ...
    'media_downloader' => WebpDownloader::class,
    // ...
];

That's it. From now on every addMediaFromUrl() call passes through the WebP converter.

Image Driver

The driver is chosen automatically from Spatie's existing config and forwarded to Spatie\Image\Image::useImageDriver():

// config/media-library.php
'image_driver' => env('IMAGE_DRIVER', 'gd'), // 'gd', 'imagick', or 'vips'

The required PHP extension (ext-gd / ext-imagick) — or libvips for vips — must be loaded.

Tuning

WebpDownloader accepts two optional constructor arguments — all auto-resolved via the container with sensible defaults:

To override, bind a custom instance in your own service provider:

use XLaravel\Spatie\MediaLibrary\WebpDownloader\WebpDownloader;

$this->app->bind(WebpDownloader::class, fn () => new WebpDownloader(
    quality: 90,
    skipMimes: ['image/svg+xml'],
));

Automatic File Name Correction

WebpDownloaderServiceProvider is auto-discovered. It hooks Media::creating and rewrites the file_name extension to .webp when all of the following hold:

• The configured media-library.media_downloader is WebpDownloader (or a subclass)
• The persisted mime_type is image/webp
• The current file_name does not already end with .webp (case-insensitive)

So obama.jpg → obama.webp (basename preserved, extension swapped). Disk uploads of unrelated formats and media added while a different downloader is configured are never touched.

If you want to opt out, remove the provider from config/app.php (or set extra.laravel.dont-discover in your root composer.json) and rename manually with ->usingFileName(...).

Bulk Converting Existing Media

For repositories that already have thousands of JPEGs/PNGs sitting on disk, the package ships an Artisan command that walks the media table and re-encodes them in place:

# Dry run — shows which rows would be converted, touches nothing
php artisan media-library:webp-convert --dry-run

# Convert everything
php artisan media-library:webp-convert

# Scope to a collection or model
php artisan media-library:webp-convert --collection=images
php artisan media-library:webp-convert --model="App\Models\Post"

# Tune chunk size for large tables
php artisan media-library:webp-convert --chunk=500

# Dispatch each row as a queued job (recommended for large libraries)
php artisan media-library:webp-convert --queue
php artisan media-library:webp-convert --queue --queue-connection=redis --queue-name=media

# Incremental migration — only media added after a date
php artisan media-library:webp-convert --since=2026-04-01

# Parallel workers splitting the id range
# Terminal A:
php artisan media-library:webp-convert --id-from=1 --id-to=50000 --queue
# Terminal B:
php artisan media-library:webp-convert --id-from=50001 --id-to=100000 --queue

For each Media row the command:

1. Skips image/webp, non-image MIME types, and entries in the configured WebpDownloader skipMimes
2. Reads the file via the row's own disk and the PathGenerator resolved by Spatie (custom path generators are honoured automatically)
3. Re-encodes to WebP using media-library.image_driver and the quality from the container-bound WebpDownloader instance
4. Writes the new .webp file, deletes the original, and updates file_name, mime_type, and size on the Media row via saveQuietly() so the auto-rename listener doesn't fire on data we have already corrected

Existing conversions (thumbnails, responsive images) become stale because their source has changed. Run php artisan media-library:regenerate afterwards — the convert command prints a reminder when it finishes.

Testing

# Build first (once per PHP version)
DOCKER_BUILDKIT=0 docker compose --profile php83 build

# Run tests
docker compose --profile php83 up
docker compose --profile php84 up
docker compose --profile php85 up

License

This package is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.