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 know that macOS has a crippled support of HEIF files, because it can't open those with a bit depth > 8 bits: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/420299/ Actually I have 16 bits HEIF files that macOS does not properly handle: blank previews in the Finder and not rendered by Preview (they are rendered as a blue blob). Files are fine since I can open them with Gimp. Now I've tried to embed JPEG EXIF thumbnails within them (thumbnails are properly created because I can re-extract them with exiftool) expecting at least the Finder to use them, but nothing changed. Is it possible to force it in some way? I suppose this has to do with Spotlight, but I really don't know it enough. As a reference, this is the command I used to convert HEIF files from TIFF: convert "file.tiff" -quality 90 "file.heif" And this is the command used to embed thumbnails: convert -thumbnail 2000x2000 -quality 70 -profile srgb file.heif jpeg:- | exiftool "-ThumbnailImage<=-" file.heif convert is from ImageMagick of course. I'm running macOS Monterey 12.6.7. Thanks.

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

**Environment** - iPad 6 - iPadOS 13.3 **Setting** - Settings app -> Camera -> Formats -> High Efficiency (instead of Most Compatible) **Result** Although the formats setting says > To reduce file size, capture photos and videos in the high efficiency HEIF/HEVC format. Most Compatible will always use JPEG/H.264. , all the photos are saved in JPG. This is confirmed by the steps below. 1. Connect my iPad to my desktop PC whose OS is Arch Linux (not Windows nor macOS). 2. Open the iPad/DCIM/100Apple directory. 3. Only *.JPG files are found. Is this a bug? How can I use HEIF?

My iPhone (iOS 12.3.1) takes pictures in HEIC / HEIF format. I have an older Macbook (13" mid-2009) with MacOS El Capitan, which includes Photos v1.5. When my iPhone photos get synced via iCloud to the Macbook, the thumbnails show up fine, but when I click on the photo, a large grey exclamation mark is shown. What settings should I change to ensure they're also viewable in El Capitan Photos 1.5? Please note that I'm not looking for another tool to run manually prior to each sync, as suggested in the "Duplication Question" suggestion. I'm just looking for a set of configuration settings that others are using successfully, to take pictures on the iPhone using HEIC / HEIF, and view *automatically* (i.e. without using another tool manually) on my Macbook El Capitan.

Consider the scenario of restoring a backup taken on an HEIF/HEVC capable device (e.g. the iPhone 7 or newer) to an older device (e.g. an iPhone 6s, running iOS 11). Will images and videos taken on the new device and accessed on the old one be: - Not restored at all? - Restored, but not displayable (i.e. taking up space, accessible for sharing/uploading etc., but not shown in the gallery)? - Be fully compatible, and displayed/decoded in software? Is there a difference between images and videos? (I could imagine that images are decoded in software on older devices, for example.)