You plugged your iPhone into your PC, copied across a folder of holiday photos, and Windows gave you a grid of blank icons and a file type you have never seen before. Nothing is broken. Those .heic files are ordinary photos in a format Windows has an awkward licensing relationship with, and there are several ways to get at them, some free and instant, some involving the Microsoft Store.
What a HEIC file actually is
HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Container, Apple’s name for a file in the HEIF family, a standard from the same group behind MPEG video. Apple switched its cameras to it with iOS 11 in 2017, and every iPhone since the 7 saves photos this way by default. Plenty of Android phones now do the same.
Apple switched for compression. The pixels inside a HEIC are usually squeezed with HEVC, also known as H.265, a video codec doing still-image duty. It packs a photo into roughly half the space of a JPG at similar visible quality, which adds up fast on a phone full of pictures. The container also holds extras a JPG cannot, such as depth maps and image sequences.
The problem on Windows has never been technical. HEVC is covered by a large pile of patents, so shipping a decoder inside Windows would mean paying licence fees on every copy. Microsoft’s answer was to move the decoders out of the operating system and into the Store as add-on packages. That is why your PC plays a 4K movie without blinking but shrugs at a 2 MB photo. For the fuller format comparison, see HEIC vs JPG.
The two Microsoft Store extensions, explained
This is the part that trips up almost everyone: two packages with similar names, and only one of them is free.
| Package | What it provides | Typical cost | Do you need it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| HEIF Image Extensions | Support for the HEIF/HEIC container and its still images | Free | Yes |
| HEVC Video Extensions | The actual H.265 decoder used inside most HEIC photos | Small paid charge | Usually yes |
| HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer | Same decoder, licensed by your PC maker | Preinstalled if present | Only if your PC has it |
The trap is that installing the free HEIF package alone often changes nothing. It teaches Windows to read the container, but the pixels inside an iPhone photo are HEVC-coded, and without that decoder Windows still has nothing to show you. You generally need both.
Before paying, check whether you already have the manufacturer version. Open Settings, go to Apps, then Installed apps on Windows 11 or Apps & features on Windows 10, and search for HEVC. Many prebuilt laptops and desktops ship with it because the maker covered the licence. If it is listed, install the free HEIF Image Extensions and you are done.
Installing them
Open the Microsoft Store, search for HEIF Image Extensions and click Get. Then search for HEVC Video Extensions, check the price shown to you, and buy it if you want this route. Buying the paid HEVC package needs a Microsoft account signed in; the free HEIF package installs without one. Afterwards, close and reopen File Explorer. Thumbnails usually appear straight away, though occasionally you need to sign out and back in, or clear the thumbnail cache with Disk Cleanup.
Worth knowing: prices and listings vary by region and Microsoft has changed them more than once over the years. If an older guide quotes a figure that does not match what you see, trust your own Store page.
Why renaming .heic to .jpg does not work
You will find this suggestion on forums constantly, and it fails every time. A file extension is only a label on the end of the name. It tells Windows which app to launch, and that is the extent of its power.
What matters is the bytes inside. A JPG starts with a specific signature followed by data compressed with a decades-old method built for still images. A HEIC starts with a completely different header, structured like an MP4 video file, including a box near the start that literally spells out heic, and its image data is HEVC. Apps read those first bytes, not the name. Rename a HEIC to .jpg and the viewer gets a file that claims to be one thing and obviously is not, so it stops and reports an unsupported format.
Real conversion is different work. The HEVC data is decoded back into raw pixels, then re-encoded from scratch with JPG compression. If you have already renamed a batch of files, rename them back to .heic and convert them properly. Nothing was damaged.
The fastest free route: convert in your browser
To see the photos now on a machine where you cannot or would rather not install anything, convert them. HEIC to JPG works inside the browser tab: an open-source HEIF decoder compiled to WebAssembly unpacks the image and the browser’s Canvas API writes out a JPG. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is queued, and there is no account. Once the page has loaded it even works offline.
That matters more than it sounds. Family pictures, photographed documents, screenshots of statements: on most online converters those pass through a stranger’s server and you have no way to know what happens next. Here they never leave the machine. It also works on locked-down PCs, since a work laptop with the Store blocked by policy still runs Chrome, Edge or Firefox.
A few practical notes:
- The free tier converts 5 files per batch, and you can run as many batches as you like. Tinyvert Pro is a one-time US$9 upgrade that lifts the batch limit if you are working through a whole camera roll.
- Choose HEIC to PNG instead when you want a lossless copy to edit, or when the image is a screenshot or graphic rather than a photograph.
- Metadata is stripped during conversion. That is a privacy win when you are posting pictures publicly, since GPS coordinates go with it, but it means the converted JPGs will not carry the original capture date. Keep the HEIC originals if you need those tags.
- JPGs from a modern iPhone are still large. Run them through the image compressor before emailing, or the resizer if they are going on a website. Our guide to compressing images without losing quality covers how far you can push it.
- To send a set of photos as a single file, image to PDF stacks them in order.
Free desktop viewers that read HEIC
If you would rather double-click a file and have something open, a few long-standing free tools handle HEIC without the Store.
IrfanView (64-bit build) reads HEIC once you install its plug-in pack, a separate download from the same site that takes seconds. It is free for personal use, opens almost every format ever invented, and has a batch conversion window.
XnView MP is also free for personal use and reads HEIC in current builds without extra steps. Its browser-style interface is friendlier for flicking through a folder, and it has its own batch converter.
GIMP opens HEIF images in recent versions, though it depends on how your build was compiled. Worth trying if you already have it, but heavy for simply looking at pictures.
CopyTrans HEIC for Windows is not a viewer at all. It installs a shell handler into Windows itself, which is why it behaves differently from the three above: File Explorer shows HEIC thumbnails again, the preview pane fills in, and Windows Photo Viewer opens the files directly. It is free for personal use and does not go through the Store.
One thing the plain viewers do not fix: File Explorer’s thumbnail grid. Those previews come from Windows’ own codec pipeline, so IrfanView, XnView MP or GIMP will open a photo you double-click while Explorer still shows a generic icon behind it. The Store extensions are the official way to get thumbnails and the preview pane back, and the free CopyTrans shell handler does the same job for personal use.
The Photos app on Windows 11 vs Windows 10
On Windows 11, opening a HEIC in the Photos app usually produces a prompt pointing at the Store packages above. Where the maker preinstalled the manufacturer codec it simply works and you never learn HEIC was involved, which is why the problem seems random from one PC to the next.
Windows 10 is blunter: Photos throws an error, and the same two packages are the official fix. Bear in mind Windows 10 left general support in October 2025, so if you are weighing up a codec purchase for a machine you plan to replace, converting is the cheaper call.
Stop your iPhone producing HEIC in the first place
If you never want to think about this again, change the phone rather than the PC.
Settings, Camera, Formats
Open Settings, tap Camera, then Formats, and choose Most Compatible instead of High Efficiency. New photos are saved as JPG and video as H.264. The trade-offs are modest: files are noticeably bigger, and while Most Compatible is selected some higher frame rate and HDR video options are unavailable. It only affects pictures taken from now on, so everything already in your camera roll stays HEIC.
Settings, Photos, Transfer to Mac or PC
This is the setting that explains why two people with identical iPhones get different results. Open Settings, tap Photos, scroll to Transfer to Mac or PC, and you will see two options.
Automatic converts photos to JPG on the way out when the destination needs it, so your PC receives ordinary JPGs even though the phone stores HEIC. Keep Originals sends the untouched .heic. If a friend gets JPGs from the same model of phone while you get HEIC, this is almost always why.
Automatic is what most Windows users want. It can be inconsistent with very large drag-and-drop transfers over USB, so if a copy of several hundred photos stalls or produces odd results, move them across in smaller groups.
Which route should you take?
| If you want | Do this |
|---|---|
| To open a few photos right now with nothing installed | HEIC to JPG in your browser |
| Thumbnails and previews working in File Explorer | Install both Microsoft Store extensions |
| To convert on a work PC where the Store is blocked | The browser converter, no install needed |
| A lossless copy for editing | HEIC to PNG |
| To archive a whole camera roll as JPG | Convert in batches, or use Pro for unlimited batch sizes |
| To email a set of photos without hitting size limits | Convert, then compress |
| To send several photos as one file | Image to PDF |
| To never see a .heic file again | Set the iPhone to Most Compatible and Automatic transfer |
When it still does not work
You installed both extensions and nothing changed. Restart File Explorer or sign out and back in. Confirm both packages are actually listed under Installed apps (Apps & features on Windows 10), since the free one alone is not enough. If thumbnails stay blank while the photos open fine, clear the thumbnail cache using Disk Cleanup.
Some HEIC files are 0 KB or refuse to copy. That is usually iCloud. With Optimise iPhone Storage on, the phone keeps placeholders locally while the full images sit in iCloud. Download the originals to the phone first, or fetch them from iCloud.com.
Some files convert and others do not. HEIC is a container and can hold unusual things: burst sequences and depth data. (The video half of a Live Photo is a separate .MOV file next to the .heic, not part of it.) Tinyvert converts the still image, which is what you want in nearly every case, but it does not extract video or produce animated output.
The converted photos have lost their dates. Expected. Metadata is removed during conversion, so Windows sorts by file creation date instead. Keep the originals if capture dates matter, or set the phone to Most Compatible so future JPGs come off the camera with their tags intact.