I used to convert a bunch of HEIC pictures on my MacBook into JPEG format by using Finder, marking the HEIC, and use from the context menu "Quick Actions" and then "Convert Image". Since my update to MacOS 12.7.3 (I think I had before 12.7.1 or 12.7.2), this does not work anymore. I don't get any error message or other visual feedback either. Clicking on "Convert to JPEG" simply does not have any observable effect. How can this be fixed?

I have iPhone 11 Pro and MacBook Pro 16", both are powerful enough to handle HEIC/HEVC. I just found that significant part of my iCloud Photo Library has an unoptimized MOV files recorded on previous iPhones: Is there any way to convert library to modern format keeping all the metadata?

Is there a quick and easy way to convert many HEIC files to png on macOS? ### Example Suppose we take some live photos on iPhone, airdrop them to MacBook, and we want to upload them to a site that only accepts .png files. I've noticed if you simply change the extension from .HEIC to .png (e.g. in the above image), then as far as I can tell, the image file is treated accordingly by programs and it 'works'. However, I guess the underlying file *hasn't* changed, so it could still contain live photo information (I think), which a normal png wouldn't have, which, in a worst case, could be a security risk or in less severe cases simply be an annoyance. ### What I know so far The best I can do right now is go through the files one by one renaming them. I would really like to know what other solutions are available (via point and click and terminal), and have a strong preference for not having to download any external software.

Is there any "native way" to view the new **HEIF/HEIC format** (or the viewer-application) in El Capitan or Sierra without upgrade of MacOS itself? It is not yet possible to upgrade yet to HighSierra for me, but I'd like to natively view images from iPhone 8 and up generation, avoiding conversions to JPG. There been questions asked about convertors of .heic to .jpg, but I don't think it's reasonable to convert images (via the means of online convertors, specialized apps, Dropbox, etc.). Soon or later .heic support will become normal, and all the online services and applications will finish the transition, so obviously there will be no need to convert to JPG. **The question:** Is there any way to install some kind of plugin or extension to MacOS to support HEIF/HEIC within the Preview App, or it may be there are good applications alike XnView or analogues, which support it out of the box?

I have in my iPhone a mixture of HEIC and JPG pictures. I have set my "Photo" settings for the transfer of pictures to a Mac or PC to "automatic". From my understanding, this should convert the pictures from HEIC to JPG on download via cable (I conclude this from [What is HEIC file, and how to convert HEIC to JPG?](https://macpaw.com/how-to/what-is-heic-file) , paragraph "How to transfer iPhone photos as JPG, not HEIC"). On my MacBook, I use ImageCapture to transfer the files. However, the HEIC files end up as HEIC. No conversion to JPG is done. What did I do wrong? Version information: iPhone 14 Pro Max, iOS 16.6.1 MacBook Pro, MacOS 12.6.9 Image Capture 8.0 **UPDATE** [Export media from iPhone directly to external drive?](https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/465517/85275) claims that the conversion can be controlled by Image Capture. This does not seem to be true for my version of Image Capture, which does not have a "Keep Original" option, as can be seen from the screenshot:

Photos on my iPhone are taken and stored as HEICs. If I use the share sheet in the Photos app to email a photo as "Actual size," the message arrives with the photo as a JPG attachment. How can I email the actual HEIC file?

I googled whether HEIC images are lossless or lossy, and whereas some articles and forum threads insist HEIC images are lossy, other insist that HEIC supports both lossy and lossless compression, > - ["HEIC is a lossless format, which means that it preserves the original image data and quality without any degradation."](https://www.linkedin.com/advice/0/) - What are the advantages and disadvantages of using HEIC format over JPEG?, LinkedIn > - ["HEICs, while also a lossy file format, tend to retain better image quality over time. They also store editing information, so even once you’ve saved edits to an image, you can reverse them in the future."](https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/file-types/image/comparison/heic-vs-jpeg.html) - HEIC vs. JPEG, Adobe but don't provide any details about how to use the latter. I use the latest Ventura, and when I edit HEIC images in Preview (and even if I chose "Lossless" when saving), their quality degrade. **My question is: How can I create lossless HEIC images, that is, the ones that won't degrade when I save and save them again and again?**

The HEIC format (and file extension such as IMG_1201.HEIC) is probably what the format is when the iPhone takes the photo that is "live" -- that a user can choose one frame out of the many frames for a duration of something like 0.5 seconds. If viewed on iPhone I can choose one of the split second photo -- such as if somebody blinked the eye, I can choose another one that is 0.2 seconds later right on iPhone. After "AirDrop" to Macbook Pro (using OS X Mojave), can the default Preview app let the user choose the 0.2 seconds one as on the iPhone?

I run High Sierra on my old Mac. Importing pictures from my iPhone running 15.7.2 was never a problem. Roughly since December 2022, I haven't been able to import photos. The error message is always the same: Unable to import due to unknown format. The pictures are in HEIC and I have HEIC pictures on my Mac from previous imports and I can still open these. My Mac knows the format, but the Photos.app somehow has stopped recognizing it. Perhaps it's a deeper problem and the format is just "an excuse" but the app is now unable to import anything?

I take photos on iPhone with HEIC image support. How can I get the original HEIC file from iCloud Photos on the web, when browsing on Windows? I'm using Firefox on Windows 10. When I download a single photo from https://www.icloud.com/#photos that is (presumably) HEIC because it has HDR and Live photo, I get a ZIP file containing a JPG and a MOV instead. (Yes, I really want the original HEIC, for testing software)

I would want to right click on HEIC file and be presented with options to save as JPEG; maybe a quick action?

I want to send images from macOS Photos in an iMessage conversation. When I **copy/paste** an image from macOS Photos to iMessage, it is converted to a JPEG file and downsampled. This loses the Live Photo video and results in a much lower resolution image. --- Original image from iCloud Photos Library on macOS: > .HEIC, Live Photo, 4032x3024, 1.1 MB --- After copy/paste to Messages and send: > .jpeg, not Live Photo, 1024x769, 218 KB, creation and modification dates have been changed to today. --- If I instead **drag** the photo to the Message conversation, rather than copy/paste, it is properly sent: > .HEIC, Live Photo, 4032x3024, 1.1 MB, filename has been changed. --- Why is copy/paste not transmitting the full resolution file? Is there a setting that controls the quality of copy/pasted images from Photos or into Messages?

I've been looking around for a while for a way to start packing image bytestreams into HEIF files, since macOS High Sierra and and iOS 11 are now out. Haven't had much luck, just large numbers of people converting .heic files to .jpg, and the Nokia JS viewer on GitHub To start, I am not looking to convert my existing Photo Library all to HEVC encoded .heic files, there's diminishing returns to be had there since they're already jpegged and have had quality loss from the original. So this question is not a duplicate of the "Convert whole library to new .HEIC format " question **My goal:** - Take both a mpeg bytestream and a PNG or JPG bytestream and pack them into a .heic file - Take multiple PNG and/or JPG bytestreams and make a .heic file of them (like a burst series of photos) HEIF is just a container, so while it was designed for HEVC use, it does support other data types like jpg, png, pretty much anything that the viewing applications support in their natives file formats. I just haven't been able to find any software that will let me do it. Everything I search for to do with HEIF or HEIC in the term just pumps me with tech news headlines about Apple trying to replace jpeg, and people converting their .heic files once their imported from their computer (which seems like it would take effort to do since iOS defaultly will convert them for you if you try to import them or share them anywhere it can't explicitly confirm the reaching end supports them...) So I'm hoping someone here knows a thing or two and could point me in the right direction at least. I'm not adverse to command line tools, or even doing some development myself if I can get pointed at a library I can import into a Swift application (I'm a late bloomer in programming, and while I could say the same for Javascript, if I was to build an app around a library to do this work, I'd much rather use Swift than use a scripting language) So hopefully someone has thought the same thing and had better luck than me finding this! :) **Edit 1, Nov 10:** I've found a site by a bloke called Ben Gotow that talks about converting existing JPEGs into HEVC bitstreams, and then putting them into a .heic or .heif container. It's close, but he hadn't been able to find a lot of detail for doing more than that. I'm not adding this as an answer, just as an edit since it is relevant but doesn't actually achieve my goal. hope anyone else finding this question will find his site useful! jpgtoheif.com

I am trying to create a shortcut on iPhone which will convert my photos from *.heic to *.jpeg and then send it on WhatsApp as a photo. Below is the screenshot of my shortcut. But the shortcut does not work. It shows selection of Photos from my phone, but does not show up WhatsApp with photos to send to recipients. What am I missing here?

Well it turns out I am an idiot and the premise of my question was incorrect. I was confused about the size and format by some alternate versions of the same photos that were airdropped, and the ".HEIC" filenames in the shared album. The versions in the shared albums and the versions after using "Import" are virtually identical (although weirdly they lose one pixel of height). Here's the info pane for an image in the shared album. The ".HEIC" title confused me, but I see now that it's a JPEG. Here's the version that was imported. The title has changed to ".JPEG" and it has mysteriously lost a single pixel of height, but otherwise it appears exactly the same. --- Original question with incorrect premise below: When someone shares a photo that I want to keep using the Shared Album feature of Photos, my workflow has been to open the shared album in the desktop Photos app, right-click the photo, and choose "Import" from the contextual menu. Only today I noticed that instead of importing the photo in its original size and format, it converts it from HEIC to JPG at a smaller size. I know that there are less convenient ways to get the original (for example "Export Unmodified Original" and then re-import) but I wonder: Is there any way to direct the "Import" command to just import the photo without changing it? This is in the current version of MacOS Monterey 12.3.1.

I’m using iPhone 13 pro max on iOS 15.4.1. I have camera formats setting on “most compatible”. When I take a picture with iPhone, the picture is in .jpeg format. However when I share the same pictures via iMessage, they are being converted to .heic format. How do I stop this conversion and keep the photos in .jpeg format while continuing to use iMessages to share photos ? Here is screenshot of photo taken with phone, copied from camera roll to "Files" on iPhone, shows as .jpeg. Here is the same picture after I iMessage it to myself and drag and drop on desktop and File info. Sorry I had screenshot it as I cant upload .heic.

I just took five pictures on an iPhone 11 and then AirDropped them to my Mac Mini. I noticed that every other image has the file extension .HEIC in uppercase. I am pretty sure that I have noticed this before, only just today thought to ask about it. Does anyone have any idea why this might be?

When in gallery and sharing an image via Gmail, it gets converted to a JPG file instead of staying as an HEIC image. Is there any way to have this behave differently?

On my iPhone, when I backup my photos with photosync , I notice that I get two files for every live photo. One HEIC and one MOV. Eg:

Recents/IMG_0941.HEIC
Recents/IMG_0941.MOV
Recents/IMG_0942.HEIC
Recents/IMG_0942.Mov

What's not clear to me is if this is redundant or just a quirk of photosync. Is this something the IPhone itself is doing (storing two files on the iphone) or is it likely that photo sync is extracting the MOV file itself? Are the two files redundant (can I delete the MOV and get back to it from just the HEIC file?)

I have recently bought an iPhone SE and switched to HEIC format for the pictures. I am sending the files to my Mac (Early 2015 Pro, Mojave) with AirDrop. Even though the sizes of images are just shy of 3 megabytes, the "Create PDF" function under "Quick Actions" is creating ~15MB per page PDFs which is kinda painful in quick upload situations. How can I resolve this enlargement issue of Preview creating PDFs? Thank you beforehand! Cheers, ~bio