What is AVIF
The AV1 codec is a popular video format that is open-source and royalty-free. The AOMedia Video 1 format (AV1) is designed for the web. Alliance for Open Media (AOM) developed an image file format, AV1 Image File Format (AVIF). For storing images or image sequences compressed with AV1 in the HEIF file format, AVIF is the image file format specification. AVIF is the latest image format that makes images smaller without sacrificing quality. Additionally, this file format can be used royalty-free, has better compression and offers more features than existing image formats. HDR support is another advantage over other formats. This new file format is also supported by many well-known companies, including Apple, Google, VideoLAN, Facebook, and Netflix. Apple took a decade to add WebP support to its web browser, Safari. It appears to be accepted much faster than WebP. AVIF is compatible with high dynamic range images, as opposed to image formats such as WebP, JPEG, JPEG2000, PNG, and GIF. The format supports up to 12 bits of color at full resolution. It delivers images up to 10 times smaller than other formats. AVIF provides animated, transparent, and lossless images. Additionally, it supports HDR. Many big companies in technology support this new file format, including Google, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft, and more.
What is Gmail
Google offers a free email service called Gmail. In 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. In most cases, users access Gmail through a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports POP and IMAP protocols for email clients. When Gmail was launched in 2004, it offered one gigabyte of space per user, significantly higher than that of its competitors. As of today, the service provides 15 gigabytes of storage. Senders are permitted to send emails up to 25 megabytes in size. In comparison, recipients are limited to receiving emails up to 50 megabytes in size. The user can insert files from Google Drive into the message to send larger files. Gmail offers both a search-oriented interface and a "conversation view" similar to an Internet forum. Among website developers, the service is noted for its early adoption of Ajax.
AVIF support
To this date, Gmail does not support AVIF images. You can attach AVIF files as you would attach any other files, but you won't be able to attach or view them inline. This may be due to the reason that Google does not want its users to perceive that every mail client will show the inlined AVIF image. As AVIF still has 60% browser support, other users may not see the image. Given that Google is a major leader and active developer of AVIF, we can expect support to be released as soon as possible.