

One workaround is to upload your HEIC images to Dropbox and choose the conversion option during the upload process. If your system is on an older macOS version, you'll face the same issue as Windows users. On a Mac, you can view these images normally as long as you're running macOS High Sierra or Mojave. It's not 100% reliable, unfortunately, and has a relatively poor 2 out of 5 star rating on the Microsoft Store, with nearly 70% of users giving it a one star rating. heif file types, allowing you to open and view these images in Windows 10. Dubbed HEIF Image Extension, this extension supports both. Instead, Microsoft released a Windows 10 extension to achieve the same goal. In Windows, although there was supposed to be native support for the HEIC and HEIF formats in recent updates, that doesn't seem to have happened. If you don't want to convert the images for any reason, then you'll need purpose-built tools to view HEIC on other operating systems. That might put your mind at ease about security threats.

The information remains private because the conversion is happening locally on the computer. If you don't want your private images to be open to such attacks, it's better to use a downloadable software utility. Since the data is being sent and received over the Internet, this means that the data is exposed to hackers. One drawback of using an online HEIC converting service is that your information is not always secure through the upload-convert-download journey. Many will have a restriction on the number of photos you can upload in a single batch, but if you don't have too many images, this is ideal. You'll see that there are quite a few online conversion sites that offer such services.

Once converted, they can be viewed normally since these formats are supported by all popular operating systems. Rather than using specific tools to enable HEIC support on multiple platforms, you can try converting HEIC into the more widely used JPG or PNG formats. This article shows you how to open HEIC files in multiple platforms including Windows, Mac, Android and Linux.Ĭonverting HEIC to JPG/PNG If Editing Required But if you have an older device, and Android phone or even a PC or Mac, you can't easily open and view these images without the right tools. If you're an iOS device user, it doesn't pose a problem since the format is native to iOS 11 and higher. Apple introduced the HEIC image format alongside with iOS 11, but it has been a disruptive development, to say the least.
