My go-to Linux image compressor is Curtail — and it just got even better.

Released on April 5, the latest version of this lossy and lossless image compression tool introduces support for compressing SVG files. Curtail already handles PNG, JPG, and WEBP image formats, so this addition extends its usefulness further.

In the application’s Preferences you can choose to enable SVG maximum compression level for (potentially) greater saves – though as the app warns, maximum can be more descriptive to the image output, so it’s a good idea to only use this option in safe mode.

Another big change in Curtail 1.7, the app swaps its PNG compression backend from OptiPNG to Oxipng. This open source project began life as a rewrite of OptiPNG in Rust but is now its own thing. It notably supports multithreaded compression for faster PNG optimization.

Elsewhere the app now displays a warning banner when overwrite mode is enabled, sports a spiffy new start screen, and shows debug information in its (libadwaita) About window.

Configurable compression timeouts were also added recently, and the team reworked Curtail’s headerbar to improve workflow. The app also now shows compression errors inline, in the main window, rather than in a pop-up dialog.

Get Curtail

As a blogger almost every image I include in post is first “crushed” to reduce file size (at the expense of quality). I find Curtail’s image compression results second-to-none, especially now that it provides greater control over compression.

Want to try it out?

Curtail is free, open source software. You can find Curtail on Flathub, grab source code from GitHub, or install a (potentially older) version from your distribution’s repo. An unofficial PPA is available for Ubuntu/Linux Mint users.