What Is a .HEIC File?

HEIF / HEIC Image (.heic, .heif)

Overview

HEIF (High Efficiency Image Format) is a container for images and image sequences standardised by MPEG in 2015. HEIC is the specific flavour that stores images compressed with HEVC (H.265), and it is the format every iPhone has shot in by default since iOS 11 in 2017.

That is why most people meet it: a photo from an iPhone arrives on a Windows PC or an older Mac as a .heic file that will not open. The format itself is well designed; the friction is HEVC's patent licensing, which kept native decoders out of Windows and many applications for years.

Technical Specifications

• MIME Type: image/heif (generic), image/heic (HEVC-coded)
• File Extensions: .heic (HEVC images), .heif (generic), .heics / .heifs (sequences), .hif (some Canon and Sony cameras)
• Category: Image
• Container: ISO base media file format (ISO/IEC 23008-12)
• Codecs: HEVC (HEIC), AV1 (that is AVIF), AVC, JPEG, and others defined by brand
• Bit depth: 8 and 10 bits; 16-bit in some camera variants
• Features: alpha, depth maps, multiple images per file, Live Photo sequences, HDR gain maps, non-destructive edits, thumbnails
• Standardised: 2015 (MPEG-H Part 12)
• Magic bytes: 66 74 79 70 68 65 69 63 (ftypheic) at offset 4 for HEIC; ftypmif1 for generic HEIF

Identification

00000000  00 00 00 18 66 74 79 70  68 65 69 63 00 00 00 00  |....ftypheic....|
00000010  6d 69 66 31 68 65 69 63  00 00 01 22 6d 65 74 61  |mif1heic..."meta|

The ftyp box's major brand tells you the codec: heic or heix (HEVC), avif (AV1), mif1 (unspecified). Apple's Live Photos use heic for the still and a separate .mov for the motion.

History and Development

MPEG designed HEIF as a modern replacement for JPEG, reusing the ISO base media container so that one file could hold several images, their edits, their thumbnails and their metadata. Apple adopted it for iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra in 2017, choosing HEVC as the codec because the A10 chip already had a hardware encoder for it.

Because the container is codec-agnostic, the same structure later carried AV1 as AVIF, which inherited HEIF's design while escaping HEVC's licensing. Windows gained HEIC support through a paid Microsoft Store extension in 2018 and bundled it on most new PCs from 2021. Google's Android added system support in version 10.

Common Use Cases

• iPhone and iPad photos since 2017, and Live Photos
• Camera output on recent Canon, Sony, Fujifilm and Samsung bodies, often as 10-bit HDR
• Photo libraries in Apple Photos, which keeps the original HEIC and converts on export when needed
• Space-constrained storage: HEIC files are roughly half the size of equivalent JPEGs

How to Open a HEIC File

Windows

• Windows 11 and most Windows 10 installs from 2021 onward open HEIC in Photos once the HEIF Image Extensions and HEVC Video Extensions are present. The HEIF extension is free; the HEVC one is free on PCs where the manufacturer licensed it and 99 cents otherwise ("HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer" is the free listing worth trying first).
• Without the extensions, CopyTrans HEIC (free for personal use) adds Explorer thumbnails and a right-click convert to JPEG.
• IrfanView, XnView and GIMP open HEIC with their respective plugins.

macOS

• Preview, Photos, Quick Look and every Apple app since High Sierra (10.13).

Linux

• Install libheif and the heif-gdk-pixbuf loader; GIMP, Eye of GNOME, gThumb and Darktable then open HEIC. Ubuntu 22.04 and later carry these in the repositories.

Android

• Android 10 and later decode HEIC natively; Google Photos and Samsung Gallery display it.

Browsers

• Safari (macOS and iOS) displays HEIC. Chrome, Firefox and Edge do not, on any platform; this is the one place AVIF is the better choice.

Stop the iPhone from producing HEIC

Settings, Camera, Formats, choose Most Compatible to shoot JPEG. Or leave it on High Efficiency and set Settings, Photos, Transfer to Mac or PC to Automatic, which converts to JPEG when transferring over USB.

How to Convert a HEIC File

On the phone

Share the photo to Mail, Messages or most apps and iOS sends a JPEG automatically. In Files, select the image, Share, Save to Files keeps HEIC; the Shortcuts app has a built-in Convert Image action for batches.

macOS

• Preview: open, File, Export, format JPEG.
• Photos: select, File, Export, Export Unmodified Original keeps HEIC; Export Photos with JPEG converts.
• Terminal, any number of files:

sips -s format jpeg *.heic --out converted/

Windows

• Photos: open, Edit, Save as JPEG (with the extension installed).
• CopyTrans HEIC: right-click, Convert to JPEG with CopyTrans.
• IrfanView: File, Batch Conversion.

Command line, any platform

# ImageMagick with libheif
magick photo.heic -quality 92 photo.jpg

# libheif's own tool, keeps metadata
heif-convert photo.heic photo.jpg

# A folder
for f in *.heic; do heif-convert "$f" "${f%.heic}.jpg"; done

Keeping the quality

HEIC to JPEG is lossy to lossy. Export at quality 90 or above. For 10-bit HDR photos, convert to PNG, AVIF or JPEG XL to keep the extra dynamic range; JPEG cannot hold it.

Advantages

• Half the size of JPEG at the same visual quality.
• Rich container: bursts, Live Photos, depth, edits and thumbnails in one file.
• 16-bit colour and HDR support.
• Default on a billion cameras, so the ecosystem keeps improving.

Limitations

• HEVC licensing keeps it out of Chrome and Firefox and out of a default Windows install.
• Compatibility friction: sharing to older systems still needs conversion.
• Confusing extensions: .heic and .heif are used loosely, and some cameras use .hif.
• Slower to decode than JPEG on machines without hardware HEVC.

Related Formats

• AVIF: the same container with the royalty-free AV1 codec; what browsers chose instead.
• JPEG: what HEIC replaces on the camera and what it is converted to for sharing.
• JXL: JPEG XL, the other successor candidate.
• MP4: the video format built on the same ISO base media container.