HEIC Viewer

How to Open HEIC Files

1. 1

   Add photos

   Drop your HEIC or HEIF photos on the page, or choose them from your files.

2. 2

   Look and pick

   See each photo in the page, then choose JPG or PNG under Save as.

3. 3

   Save

   Download one photo, or download all of them together as one ZIP file.

What Is a HEIC File

A HEIC file is a photo saved in the High Efficiency Image Container format. It is Apple's name for HEIF pictures compressed with HEVC (H.265). The file ending is .heic, sometimes .heif. Both are the same format. HEIC files are smaller than JPG files at similar quality.

iPhones have saved photos as HEIC by default since iOS 11 in 2017. The setting is in Settings, Camera, Formats. High Efficiency saves HEIC. Most Compatible saves JPG.

Open HEIC File on Windows or Android

Many Windows PCs, Android phones, web forms and older programs cannot open a HEIC file without extra software. This page needs none. Drop the photo on it and the photo opens right here, large and upright, the way it looked on the phone. It works the same way for a PC running Windows 11.

With several photos, a row of small pictures appears under the large one. Tap a picture to see it large. Under the picture you see the file name it will be saved under, its size in pixels and the size of the file.

What This HEIC Viewer Does

The tool decodes your photos in your browser. Nothing is uploaded. Safari can read HEIC itself. Chrome, Edge and Firefox cannot, so the page loads an open source decoder called libheif the first time you pick a photo. It is about 2 MB and downloads once. The photo still stays on your device.

• Up to 30 photos at once on a computer, 100 MB each. Up to 10 photos on a phone, 30 MB each.
• A 12-megapixel photo usually opens in a second or two on a recent computer. A phone or an older computer can take longer.
• A photo of up to 16 megapixels is saved at its full size. A larger one, such as a 48-megapixel photo, is scaled down to 16 megapixels. The page shows a note when that happens.
• The saved file holds the picture only. Details the camera stored in the HEIC, such as the date taken, the camera model and the GPS location, are not copied. That is a limit if you need the date, and useful if you do not want to share the location.
• A Live Photo is a HEIC still plus a separate short video. The tool opens the still picture. A HEIC file with several images, such as a burst, shows its main image.
• A damaged file, or one that uses a codec the decoder cannot read, is left out and a note says so.

To strip hidden details from a photo you want to share, use the metadata remover.

HEIC Converter: HEIC to JPG and HEIC to PNG

Under Save as, choose JPG or PNG. JPG is the default, saved at quality 92. It is small and opens everywhere. PNG is lossless, so every pixel of the decoded photo is kept, but the file is several times larger. Use JPG for sharing and PNG when you want nothing lost.

In one test, an 8.5-megapixel photo was about 0.9 MB as a JPG and 6.7 MB as a PNG. PNG files are made only when you choose PNG, which takes a moment per photo.

iPhone photos use the Display P3 color space. The tool copies the photo's color profile into the saved file, so colors look the same as in the original. In Safari, the browser converts the photo to standard sRGB instead. Either way the colors are right.

Need the photos in one PDF? Save them as JPG first, then turn them into one file with the JFIF to PDF tool, which takes JPG files. More free tools are on the free tools page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

• High Efficiency Image File Format (Wikipedia)
• libheif, the HEIF decoder used here (GitHub)

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