Raspy

How to open and edit HEIC photos on Windows

Published · 4 min read

An iPhone saves photos as HEIC, and a Windows PC often greets them with a broken thumbnail and an error. You can buy a codec, change a setting on the phone, or skip the problem and open the file in a browser that decodes it locally. This guide covers all three and recommends the last.

Why HEIC fails on Windows

HEIC is a container for images compressed with HEVC, the same codec used for 4K video. Apple made it the default camera format in 2017 because a HEIC file is roughly half the size of an equivalent JPEG. Windows can show a HEIC only if two extensions are installed: HEIF Image Extensions, which is free, and HEVC Video Extensions, which Microsoft charges for on most PCs. Without both, Photos, Explorer and most other apps refuse the file.

Browsers are different. Safari decodes HEIC on its own, and a web page can ship its own decoder and run it inside the page. That is the route Raspy takes, and it is why the file opens on a PC that has no codec at all.

Option 1: open it in the browser and edit it there

This needs nothing installed and nothing uploaded. Raspy first asks the browser to decode the file. If the browser cannot, it loads libheif, an open-source HEIC decoder compiled to WebAssembly, and decodes the file on your PC. The decoder is about 1.4 MB and is only fetched when it is needed.

  1. Get the photo onto the PC. A USB cable, iCloud for Windows, or sending it to yourself all work. Keep it as HEIC; there is no need to convert first.
  2. Open Raspy in Chrome, Edge or Firefox and click Open photo, or drop the file anywhere on the page.
  3. Edit as you would on the phone. The adjustments are the iPhone's fifteen, in the same order, and crop and straighten work the same way.
  4. Click Save and choose JPEG. The file lands in your Downloads folder as a JPEG that any Windows app can open.

If you only need the JPEG and no edits, do the same and skip step 3. The export re-encodes from the decoded pixels, so it is a real conversion, not a renamed file.

Option 2: install the Windows codecs

Open the Microsoft Store and install HEIF Image Extensions. Then search for HEVC Video Extensions. On some PCs a free "from Device Manufacturer" version is available; otherwise it is a small one-off purchase. After both are installed, HEIC files show thumbnails in Explorer and open in Photos. This is the right choice if you deal with HEIC every day and want every Windows app to understand it.

Option 3: stop the iPhone making HEIC

On the phone, go to Settings, then Camera, then Formats, and choose Most Compatible. New photos are saved as JPEG at the cost of roughly twice the storage. Photos already taken stay HEIC. A gentler option is Settings, Photos, Transfer to Mac or PC, set to Automatic, which converts to JPEG only when the phone is plugged into a computer.

What you lose, and do not lose, by going through the browser

The decoded image is the full-resolution photo, so there is no quality lost in opening it. When you save as JPEG, the usual JPEG compression applies; the quality slider in the save sheet controls it. EXIF metadata, including the GPS location, is not carried into the saved file, which is usually what you want for a photo that is about to be shared. If you need the metadata preserved, use option 2 and copy the HEIC as it is.