Dragging different images from Chrome to other apps results in different behavior

Question

Take these two images: https://cdn.traileraddict.com/content/universal-pictures/get-out-2017-3.jpg and https://d2nebe8lbbiml.cloudfront.net/content/photos/10907/281288_074.jpg

(Note they cannot be embedded in the post, or the problematic behaviour will not occur)

They’re both direct links to jpgs, and the browser renders them in the same fashion. However, if I try to drag the images from the browser to somewhere else, different things happen.

If I drag them to the Desktop: nothing happens with the first one; the second one gets saved (as expected). If I drag them to another app (like Messages): the first one gets converted to its URL; the second one is appended (as expected).

This happens to me on Google Chrome on macOS (Sierra, but I’m fairly confident it happened in earlier versions as well) but not on Safari on that same system.

Why the different behaviour?

Answer 1

Even though they both have .jpg extension in the url, the first image is not a JPG file but a WebP file, which is why Chrome handles them in different ways. You can check this by trying to open the 1st image in a new tab and then pressing Ctrl + S to save it.

Every jpg file will behave the same when you try to drag it.