IPhones' default photo format is HEIC, something that Windows doesn't open by default.
IPhones' default photo format is HEIC, something that Windows doesn't open by default.
112 comments
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This is not a coincidence, Apple purposefully make it painful to use anything with any of their products unless it's one of their products
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For W10, you install an app to get the codec, then you’re done. It’s built in on W11. Same as HEVC video which is used very commonly in piracy. Are pirates out to make it “purposefully painful” or are they just using modern codecs? Android also can save to HEIC or AVIF.
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Here's the free oem app as an msix package as Microsoft removed the store link. link
(yes I did accidentally upload it to the wrong collection, but I don't think I can change that)
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Yeah it's a bit of a tossup between them. Apple definitely chose it to be a dick. However, Microsoft could rectify it easily if they wanted to.
Both HEVC and HEIC thought cost money, and the vast majority of windows users will never use the codecs. Including the license with every copy of Windows is added cost to the end user that they receive no benefit from, so I understand why they would leave it out. HEVC prompts you if you try to play to go to the store and buy the license, which is good for your entire account. Honestly it's not a terrible thing to do. I was one of the 1% of people who would play HEVC natively on Windows, so yeah the $3 license made sense
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Yea ... no, sorry to say but this one's on Microsoft. I get it, hurr durr Apple expensive and elitist, but they know where to put up their walled garden and where not to. For example they used to have their own video container .mov but they're way past forcing something like that onto iPhone users. And even back then, the actual codec they committed themselves to in those days was H.264, a standard that's open to adoption by anybody. You can easily turn an old .mov into an .mp4 or .mkv without needing to alter the actual content of the file and that content is playable by pretty much every media device built in the last 15+ years.
HEIC isn't Apple's thing it's from the MPEGroup, also easily licensable by anybody. I guess the reason why it wasn't part of Windows 10 from the beginning is because they both came out in mid 2015. Windows 10 seems to have adopted it for viewing (and later editing) in 2018 but they make you hit a stupid download button in their store to get it so that's lame.
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Yep. Lack of format support is usually to blame on the one who doesn't support the format. You can absolutely blame Apple for this too though, their apps can't open e.g. Matroska video or FLAC.
And perplexingly, they don't support uploading HEIC, their own image format of choice, on the web iCloud Photos. So there's that too.
(At this point my music library is stored as ALAC because it's well supported in both Linux and Apple's OSes. Really wish it wouldn't have to be that way though. Someone needs to tell them about ffmpeg.)
For example they used to have their own video container .mov
It's always very very funny every time someone mentions MOV, because while it's very similar to MP4, it's actually an open format while MP4 isn't (!). You actually have to pay for the MP4 standard document while Apple just gives you the MOV documentation.
Also at least taking a screen capture on macOS still gives you a MOV container, actually.
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HEIC is a much better-compressed format than JPEG that all Androids support; iirc JPEG XL (kinda dead) and Google's WebP are the only other big-name formats with better photographic compression. Windows was the only major operating system that chose to have consumers separately pay the patent fee, none of which goes to Apple. Since Windows 11 22H2, HEIC images work out-of-the-box.
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Someone tried to send me a picture they took and it looked like hot garbage until they sent it over email. Not because it couldn't be sent without feeding it through a potato first, because Apple wants a worse experience for anyone not in their ecosystem.
When they are the oddball in the group though, it just makes iPhone's look like a worse option.
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Leaving aside that this one is Microsoft’s fault, how is it painful? Do you even have an iPhone? And if so, how often do you move images to your PC from it, without those images going through an intermediary service?
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However, they still forget that working with their products is the worst pain in the arse.
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Same thing with the M4A music format. My Mac struggles to read MP3s in most programs (other than Preview). I have to convert them to M4A if I want to import them anywhere.
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As much as I love to hate on apple, any of this format shit is 100% Windows bullshit. It's not just pictures, with shit like webm, or some random video codecs it'll ask you to FUCKING BUY! But even shit like Windows only supporting some like 3 file formats from the god knows how many out there. Ever since I switched to Linux (heck, even fucking MacOS would do better) all this stopped being an issue. Fuck windows for literally only supporting their special selection of formats. There's a good reason why the first step of many people installing windows is also Installing VLC or MUCH superior image viewers. Because Microsoft chooses to not support most things out there!
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Exactly. Android's default image format is HEIC as well. Jpeg is outdated and needs to die already.
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And today I learned that HEIC is not a proprietary Apple format
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Classic jpeg still has value and there's improved revisions.
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I had my phone taking photos in HEIC for a couple months. i ended up switching back to .JPG because both signal and whatsapp stuggled with it
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How many distros support h264/265 out of the box? They probably don't support most HEIC images either since they're HEVC on the inside
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Imageglass, be chill
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I can use HEIC on Arch (btw) just fine. As I recall there's some bullshit you need to download on the Microsoft store to get it to work. It's a pain in the ass.
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You can change this in Settings > Camera > Formats > choose Most Compatible to change from HEIF/HEVC to JPEG/H.264
EDIT: I use XnViewMP to browse photos and it can convert HEIC to JPG and HandBrake can handle HEVC to MP4 or MKV.
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It becomes a problem if you didn't take the photos.
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Ffmpeg
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Not sure if it works for HEIC, but here's a tip for converting WEBP (common on websites) to a more universal format like PNG:
1: open Paint
2: open .WEBP in paint
3: save as -> PNG
4: give name and saveThere's also a Firefox extension that I use that that lets you just save as PNG https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/save-webp-as-png-or-jpeg/
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Or even better, use ImageMagick.
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Have you got compatibility turned on in the photos app?
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I didn't take the photos.
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Possibly Linux?
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Not the time, not the place. As a Linux user seriously no, just no. People like you are the reason Linux users are seen as unhelpful and toxic, this is a codec issue not an OS issue.
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Read my username
It is for the memes
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Hmm, maybe they should try Linux then. Solve both the codec and the OS problem.
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How many browsers open it natively?
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Only Safari.
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I use an open source video codec library in Windows 10 but I'm away from my computer for a while and cannot tell you.
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Becoming a default to have it installed in Windows. On a personal machine, it’s easy to fix. In our work environment, we just made sure it’s on the image by default. You can also circumvent a windows store block by installing appx stuff in Powershell.
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Here's $0 kid, buy yourself a better operating system. All the others come with HEIC support.
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Get work to implement it.
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You just have to get them to support a free image viewer that also supports HEIC, not impossible.
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Yeah I hate this too - one of my clients regularly supplies images as HEIC files and they are always crappy to work with. Plus the images just seem much lower quality, which is a problem when they are being used for professional purposes.
112 comments