Save Image as Type Is Gone: How to Replace It Safely

What happened to Save Image as Type

Save Image as Type was a small, useful extension that was sold, had malicious code added, and was removed by Google in March 2026. When it came down it had over a million users, and for most of them it had done exactly what it said for years: add "Save as PNG", "Save as JPG" and "Save as WebP" to the right-click menu on images.

The problem was never the image conversion. After the change of ownership, the extension started quietly earning money from its users' shopping. Cybernews' analysis found it inserting hidden frames into pages for 8.5 seconds at a time, routing visits through nearly 600 affiliate redirect URLs and taking commissions from more than a thousand merchants. It was built not to get caught: it stayed dormant until someone had saved at least 10 images, and it avoided running on developer-oriented pages where someone might notice.

The buyer wasn't a one-off. Security researcher Wladimir Palant had already documented the group involved, which reporting identifies as Karma, and gHacks summarizes the model in one line: "Karma often buys existing, trusted extensions from the original developers and then adds malicious code after purchase." The listing now reads "this item is not available", and Chrome disabled installed copies with a malware warning.

Two honest limits on what we know. The reports we read describe affiliate hijacking, and none of them describe stolen passwords or cookies, so we won't claim either. They also disagree on when the sale happened, so we're not going to give you a date.

The lesson is uncomfortable, and it's the reason for this guide: the extension did nothing wrong for years, then changed hands. A good track record didn't protect anyone, because what changed was who owned it.

Check whether it's still on your machine

Open chrome://extensions and look for it. If Chrome has already disabled it, it will be flagged there with a malware warning, and the right move is still to remove it rather than leave a disabled copy sitting in your profile.

To remove it, click Remove on its card and confirm. Google's help page also documents the shortcut: right-click the extension's icon next to the address bar and choose Remove from Chrome. If you use Chrome on more than one computer, check each of them.

While you're on that page, it's worth looking at everything else you have installed. The Save Image as Type story is a good prompt to remove the extensions you installed once and forgot about.

Why the name no longer tells you anything

Search for "save image as type" today and the name leads you to several different extensions. When we captured the results on September 23, 2026, the day we published this guide, the top three Google results were three separate Chrome Web Store listings using the same name. Each had its own description, and one was updated as recently as September 11. Below them were a standalone website with that name, two Firefox add-ons and a GitHub fork. Google's AI Overview on the same page still recommends "the Save image as Type browser extension" as if there were exactly one.

We haven't audited those listings and we're not going to name a winner among them. Some may be well-built replacements from honest developers. The point is simpler: a familiar name is exactly what someone buying extensions to exploit would want to trade on, so the name carries no trust at all. Judge every one of them, ours included, on the checks below.

Five checks before you install a replacement

A right-click image converter needs a lot of access to do its job, so be deliberate about which one you trust. In our previous guide we listed four checks for choosing any right-click image extension: the last-updated date, the rating and how many people gave it, the permissions, and the privacy disclosure. They all still apply. Save Image as Type adds two more, and puts a different one first.

1. Who publishes it, and can you read the code? Look at the developer name and website on the listing, and whether the source is published. An extension that is part of a company's product, with a support address and a business behind it, is a very different thing from a hobby project with a Gmail contact. A hobby project isn't dishonest, but it can be sold, and the buyer inherits every user's trust overnight. Public source code doesn't prove the build in the store matches it, but it puts the code in front of anyone who wants to check, which is where an injected script gets noticed.
2. The last-updated date. Out-of-date extensions are a maintenance risk, and a sudden update to an extension that had been quiet for years deserves a second look.
3. The ratings, read recently. Sort reviews by newest. Users often notice odd behavior before the store does.
4. The permissions and the privacy disclosure. Read the Privacy practices tab as well as the description. Chrome's own description of the broadest one is blunt: access to your data on all websites lets an extension "read, request or modify data from every page you visit". A right-click image tool needs to fetch images from the pages you use it on, so it will usually ask for broad access. That makes the next step worth doing.
5. Limit where it runs. Chrome lets you narrow what an installed extension can reach: open its Details, find "Allow this extension to read and change all your data on websites you visit", and choose When you select the extension. Some extensions break with this setting, so try it before relying on it. Where it works, the extension only touches the pages you ask it to.

None of these checks would have caught Save Image as Type on the day it was bought. Together they reduce how much any extension can do if it goes bad, and they're how you'd notice sooner.

Why so many replacements stop at JPG, PNG and WebP

Many right-click converters work inside your browser using the canvas element, and the formats a canvas can produce are limited. MDN's reference for canvas.toBlob() is precise about it: "Browsers are required to support image/png; many will support additional formats including image/jpeg and image/webp." That's why so many listings read "save it as JPEG, PNG, or WebP": it's the list the browser hands them.

There's a trap hidden in the same page. If you ask for a format the browser can't encode, you don't get an error: "The default type is image/png; that type is also used if the given type isn't supported." An extension that offers more formats than the canvas can produce either includes its own encoder or quietly gives you a PNG with the wrong file extension. That's the rename trap from our last guide, done automatically.

Local conversion has a real advantage: the image never leaves your machine. It also has a ceiling. For AVIF, JPEG XL or PDF output, and for anything beyond a straight format change such as resizing, cropping, rotating or background removal, you need an actual encoder and image engine. You either install one or send the image to one.

We send it to one, and we're precise about what that means below. That's the trade: a much wider set of outputs, and one round trip to our API, in exchange for local-only processing.

The Mochify workflow: Convert to, or describe it

The Mochify extension puts two things in the right-click menu on every image: Convert to, for a one-click format change, and Send to Mochify..., for anything you'd rather describe than click through. Both run through the same engine as our web app, CLI, API and MCP server.

Which format to pick

Pick for where the image is going next, not for which format is newest. The short version is JPG for compatibility, PNG for editing or transparency, and WebP or AVIF for putting it back on the web.

Two habits worth keeping. First, convert once, from the best source: a web image is usually already lossy, and converting it to another lossy format compresses it a second time, so if you'll edit it, go to PNG. Second, match the transparency: if the image has a transparent background, choose PNG, WebP, AVIF or JPEG XL, never JPG. Our WebP and AVIF transparency guide explains why, and WebP vs AVIF vs JPEG XL covers choosing one to standardize on.

If what you already have is a downloaded AVIF that won't open, our free AVIF to JPG converter handles the file directly.

Cheat sheet

The 30-second version: Save Image as Type was sold and became malware; remove it. The name now belongs to several unrelated extensions, so judge replacements by who publishes them and what they can access. Canvas-based converters top out at JPG, PNG and WebP. For more formats or real edits, you need an encoder, and ours runs in memory with zero retention.

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