HEIC: why iPhone photos will not open on Windows, and every way to fix it

You transfer photos from an iPhone to a Windows laptop and get a folder of files with a blank icon. You attach one to a job application and the form says "unsupported file type". The print kiosk at the pharmacy does not list them at all. The files end in .HEIC, and the problem is not your phone or your computer; it is that Apple chose a better format than the rest of the world was ready for.

What HEIC is

HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Container. It stores the picture using HEVC, the same compression method as 4K video, inside a container called HEIF. Apple switched to it with iOS 11 in 2017 because it holds the same quality as a JPG in roughly half the space, and because it can carry things JPG cannot: 16-bit colour, the depth map behind Portrait mode, Live Photo motion, and on recent iPhones the extra brightness information for HDR display.

The catch is that HEVC is patented and licensed, so operating systems and software did not add support for free. Windows 10 and 11 can show HEIC only after installing an extension from the Microsoft Store, and the half that handles HEVC decoding is usually a paid item unless the PC maker included it. Older Android phones, many web upload forms, some email clients, most photo kiosks and a great deal of office software simply do not read it.

Converting to JPG

JPG opens everywhere, which is the entire point. The HEIC to JPG converter on this site decodes the file in your browser and saves a standard JPG at high quality. Browsers cannot read HEIC natively, so the page loads a small decoder the first time; after that it is cached and conversions are quick. Decoding HEIC is genuinely heavy work, so a 48-megapixel photo from a current iPhone takes a few seconds, and a phone is slower at it than a computer. Nothing is uploaded, which matters for a camera roll full of family and personal photos more than for most files.

What you give up: a JPG holds 8-bit colour and nothing else. The Live Photo motion, the Portrait depth map and the HDR brightness layer are not carried over, and the file is larger, typically about twice the size. For sharing, printing, uploading and attaching, none of that is a loss you will see.

Stop the problem at the source

If you regularly send photos to Windows or to websites, two iPhone settings save you from converting ever again:

• Settings, Camera, Formats, Most Compatible. New photos are saved as JPG from now on. Existing HEIC photos stay as they are and still need converting. The cost is storage: your photos take about twice the space.
• Settings, Photos, Transfer to Mac or PC, Automatic. Keeps HEIC on the phone but converts to JPG when you copy photos over a cable to a computer. This is the better option if you want the smaller files on the phone and compatible files on the PC.

Sharing from the Photos app to Mail, or to most third-party apps, also converts to JPG automatically. The HEIC originals usually surface when you move files by cable, by AirDrop to a Mac, or through a cloud drive, which copy the file exactly as it is stored.

Opening HEIC on Windows without converting

If you only need to see the photos, the "HEIF Image Extensions" package from the Microsoft Store is free and lets Photos and Explorer display them. The "HEVC Video Extensions" package that does the actual decoding costs a small amount unless your PC maker pre-installed it, which many do. Neither helps with websites or printers; for those you still need JPG.

Batches

The converter here works one photo at a time, which is right for the form, the listing or the print you need today and wrong for a trip's worth of hundreds. For a whole batch, the phone is the better tool: set Transfer to Mac or PC to Automatic and copy the photos over a cable, and they arrive as JPG in one go. Once they are JPG, the bulk compressor takes up to fifty at a time and returns a ZIP of files shrunk to a sensible size for email or upload, and the compress to size page handles a single file that has to land under an exact kilobyte limit.

Which to keep

Keep the HEIC originals in your library. They are smaller, they hold more, and your phone and any Mac read them perfectly. Convert copies when a destination needs JPG, the way you would export a PDF from a document rather than writing the document in PDF. Converting your whole library and deleting the originals throws away the depth, motion and HDR data for no benefit, and doubles your storage use.