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HEIC arrived with iOS 11 - what still will not open it in 2026

Apple switched the iPhone camera to HEIC by default when iOS 11 shipped on September 19, 2017, cutting photo file sizes by roughly 40-50 percent. Nine years on, most browsers and many Windows PCs still cannot open a .heic file directly - the fastest fix is converting it to JPG with the HEIC to JPG converter.

Last reviewed: 2026-09-19

Published July 11, 2026

freetoolonline.com Editorial Team

What happened

Apple released iOS 11 on September 19, 2017, alongside the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and iPhone X. From that release on, iPhone 7 and later models switched their default camera format from JPEG to HEIC for photos and from H.264 to HEVC for video, storing each picture in roughly 40-50 percent less space than an equivalent JPEG - the same storage suddenly held twice as many photos.

Nine years later, native browser support is still narrow. Checked against the caniuse.com HEIF/HEIC support table on July 11, 2026:

Browser	HEIC/HEIF status	Since
Safari (macOS and iOS)	Renders natively in an image tag	Version 17 (2023)
Chrome	No native support, no flag	-
Firefox	No native support (Bugzilla bug 1402293, priority P5, unassigned)	-
Edge and Opera	No native support (follow Chromium)	-

That leaves roughly 14 percent of global browser traffic able to display a .heic file directly in a web page - everyone else sees a broken-image icon unless the site converts the file first. Operating systems fared better: Android added platform HEIF support in Android 9 "Pie" on August 6, 2018. Windows 11 from 22H2 onward opens HEIC files out of the box, but Windows 10 and earlier builds need two Store add-ons - HEIF Image Extensions and HEVC Video Extensions - before Photos shows a thumbnail.

Why it matters for everyday files

Why this matters for everyday files: a .heic photo that will not open is not corrupted - it is simply in a format the receiving app or website has not been taught to read yet. The mismatch shows up when emailing a photo to a Windows PC, uploading to a site built for JPEG, or pasting into an editor written before HEIC existed. Apple's workaround is Settings, then Camera, then Formats, switching "High Efficiency" to "Most Compatible" so the iPhone saves new photos as JPEG. That only affects photos taken after the switch, not files already on the phone or already sent.

What to do with your files right now

If a .heic file will not open, these options cover almost every case:

Convert it to JPG once, and it works everywhere. The HEIC to JPG converter turns a .heic photo into a JPG that opens in any browser, OS, or editor from the last twenty years, with no extension to install.
Compress the converted JPG if size matters. The image compressor claws back some of HEIC's space savings after conversion.
Compare formats before choosing one for new work. The HEIC vs JPG vs WebP guide covers which format fits archiving, web publishing, or sharing with an older device.
Change the camera setting only if the mismatch keeps repeating. Settings, then Camera, then Formats, then Most Compatible stops new HEIC files at the source, at the cost of the storage savings.

Where HEIF actually came from, and how Macs fit in

HEIF is not something Apple invented - the container format is an open standard published by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as ISO/IEC 23008-12, finalized in 2015, two years before Apple shipped it. That is also why the file extension differs by device: the iPhone camera saves HEIF files encoded with the HEVC codec under the .heic extension, while several Android phones that support the same underlying HEIF standard save the equivalent file as .heif instead. Macs got native support the same month as iPhones - macOS High Sierra (10.13) shipped September 25, 2017, and let Photos, Preview, and Quick Look open .heic files right away. That first release could only display HEIC, though; writing or exporting a HEIC file from a Mac needed a later point update or a third-party app.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does converting a HEIC photo to JPG lose any quality?

A little, technically. HEIC and JPG are both lossy formats built on different codecs (HEIC uses HEVC-style compression, JPG uses the older discrete-cosine-transform codec), so converting between them discards some data on top of whatever the camera already threw away. In practice the loss is not visible at normal viewing and sharing sizes - it only compounds if the same photo gets converted back and forth repeatedly.

What is a Live Photo file actually made of?

Two separate files, not one. Taking a Live Photo writes a normal .heic still image plus a short .mov video clip covering about 1.5 seconds before and after the shutter press, both tagged with the same asset identifier so Photos can match them and play the motion when you press and hold. Opening only the .heic file shows the still frame with no motion.

Do videos get a new file extension too, the way photos changed to .heic?

No. iPhone video has used the .mov container since long before iOS 11, and it still does - iOS 11 changed the codec inside that .mov file from H.264 to HEVC (H.265), not the file extension. Photos are the ones that visibly changed extension, from .jpg to .heic.

Does the "Most Compatible" camera setting only affect photos?

No - it is one switch for both. Settings, then Camera, then Formats, then Camera Capture controls the codec for the next photo (HEIF vs JPEG) and the next video (HEVC vs H.264) together, so turning it on for compatibility reasons changes both media types going forward, not just stills.

Does converting a Portrait-mode HEIC photo to JPG lose anything besides the file format?

Yes - the depth map. A Portrait-mode photo stores a separate, lower-resolution depth map inside the HEIC file alongside the main image, which is what lets you adjust the background blur later in the Photos app. JPG has no equivalent slot for that data, so converting a Portrait photo to JPG keeps the blur that was already baked in but permanently discards the ability to change it afterward.

Sources

caniuse.com - HEIF/HEIC browser support table (checked 2026-07-11)
Wikipedia - High Efficiency Image File Format
Apple Support - Using HEIF or HEVC media on Apple devices
Mozilla Bugzilla - bug 1402293, HEIF image format support tracking
Android Developers Blog - Introducing Android 9 Pie
Wikipedia - macOS High Sierra (checked 2026-09-19)
Apple Developer Documentation - PHAsset (Live Photo asset pairing)
Apple Developer Documentation - HEIC Image Properties (auxiliary image / depth map storage)

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Last updated: Sep 19, 2026

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