In the Store app, click on the “ Get” or “ Install” button.

Click here to go to the HEIF Images Extension page.Follow the steps shown below to install it. Microsoft provides an official extension called HEIF Images Extension to open the HEIC files. You need to install the HEIF codec to open the HEIC files and photos in the Windows 10 Photos app. In fact, you will just see the blank file icon for HEIC files rather than its preview in the File Explorer.įollow the steps shown below to install the HEIF extension and enable HEIC file compatibility in Windows 10. Due to that, you cannot open the HEIC files with the default Photos app. Situation with Windows is not that great since Windows doesn’t recognize HEIC files as images, it can’t show previews you browse a folder with HEIC files nor you can view images with built in image viewer.As good as the HEIF file format is, Windows 10 doesn’t natively support files with HEIC file extension. If you want to post some image (on Instagram or Facebook for example) or share these images with someone using your iPhone they will be automatically converted to JPEG and you won’t even notice that.Īll devices using iOS 11 or later or macOS High Sierra or later can view or edit HEIF and HEVC media files basically just same way as JPEGs. Images taken and saved in this format are basically twice as small as JPEG and videos are about 40% smaller than H.264 ones and that can save quite some space on your devices. There are basically two formats : HEIF ( High Efficiency Image File Format) for photos and HEVC ( High Efficiency Video Coding), also known as H.265, for videos. The situation with videos is even worse.įor that reason Apple introduced the HEIC format that feature smaller files while preserving the same visual quality so you could store more images and videos on your iPhone storage or your iCloud or Dropbox cloud storage as well as bandwidth needed for uploading of images or vidoes, or your hard drive space if you backup your photos there. Well, as you know JPEG images could be quite big and they can quickly fill up your iPhone storage. But what’s that new High Efficiency (HEIC) format all about? Most people are familiar with JPEG format since it’s been around for ages.

Heic file reader