NightMonkeys

A collection of ImageIO plugins, adding support for newer image formats. NightMonkeys uses the Foreign Linker API available since JDK 22 to access native libraries.

How it works

NightMonkeys plugins are released as multi-release JARs:

• with Java < 22, a no-op version of the plugin will unregister itself on load, basically doing nothing
• with Java 22+, the plugin will be available

This lets you add the dependencies in your project whatever the JDK used, and still enable the plugin at runtime if the necessary JDK is used.

Supported formats

Plugin	Format	Read	Write	Metadata	TwelveMonkeys Tests	Notes
jxl	Jpeg XL	✔	-	-	✔	See limitations in the plugin page
webp	WebP	✔	-	-	✔	See limitations in the plugin page
heif	HEIF & AVIF	✔	-	-	✔	See limitations in the plugin page

When possible, the plugins will use the extensive test suite from TwelveMonkeys, which covers much more test cases than simple decoding/encoding.

Requirements

In order for the plugins to run properly, you will need to:

• Run Java 22 with the following options:

--enable-native-access=ALL-UNNAMED

• Make sure the path to the directory containing the native libraries is contained in the Java system property java.library.path (check also this).
  • For Linux, normally it works fine when installed from a package manager. You can add the libraries' path to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.
  • For Mac, if using HomeBrew, you will need to set JAVA_LIBRARY_PATH to /usr/local/lib/ or /opt/homebrew/lib/.

Installation

Gradle

runtimeOnly "com.github.gotson.nightmonkeys:imageio-{plugin}:{version}"

Gradle (Kotlin DSL)

runtimeOnly("com.github.gotson.nightmonkeys:imageio-{plugin}:{version}")

Maven

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.github.gotson.nightmonkeys</groupId>
  <artifactId>imageio-{plugin}</artifactId>
  <version>{version}</version>
  <scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>