HEIF and HEVC in iOS 11 – how does that impact Windows users?

For Windows users that use iPhones/iPads, how does the iOS 11 change to using HEIF and HEVC formats for images & videos impact Windows users? My understanding is that Win10 does not support these formats yet and that iOS will sometimes transcode these files to JPG and h.264 when transferring the files via AirDrop/Mail/Share.

What I am wondering about is the other ways files get tranferred from iOS to Windows: Outlook app, OneDrive, SMS, connecting an iPhone directly to a PC via USB, etc.

Just wondering is anyone has done any testing around this?

Conversation 8 comments

  • Polycrastinator

    20 September, 2017 - 12:55 pm

    <p>Yeah, apparently that can cause problems. What Microsoft needs to do is get with the program (this is a standard, after all, it's not an Apple thing) and include compatibility. And they need to push out that update yesterday.</p><p>All that said, nothing stopping a third party program from having support. Just look for a different image viewer.</p>

    • Chris_Kez

      Premium Member
      20 September, 2017 - 1:40 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#178247"><em>In reply to Polycrastinator:</em></a></blockquote><p>I wonder if/when Adobe will support these file types.</p>

  • Paul Thurrott

    Premium Member
    20 September, 2017 - 1:49 pm

    <p>Given the speed at which Microsoft moves, I'm betting this happens in the Photos app in the next version of Windows 10 and in OneDrive (for mobile backup) sometime this year. But no official word yet.</p>

  • Andy Babiec

    21 September, 2017 - 6:09 pm

    <p>I'm just wondering if the safe bet is to disable HEIF and HEVC in iOS 11 until you are sure the compatibility issues are ironed out.</p><p><br></p><p>I just don't want to end up with pictures I cannot&nbsp;use on Windows or other platforms. Even if OneDrive or Photos adds support for these, what about all of my other programs I use for viewing &amp; editing phots/videos.</p><p><br></p>

    • Andy Babiec

      21 September, 2017 - 6:19 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#180790"><em>In reply to ababiec:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>According to dropbox, only iOS11 and macOS High Sierra support HEIC photos. All windows versions, Android and lower versions of mac/iOS do not support it.</p><p><br></p><p>With HEVC videos, the situation is a little better: Win10 and Android 5 support HEVC-encoded MOV files.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>

  • Simon Flynn

    21 September, 2017 - 8:15 pm

    <p>They're being uploaded to Google Photos as .HEIC on my phone, but jpeg for Onedrive still. The jpeg is almost 6x larger!</p>

  • rameshthanikodi

    21 September, 2017 - 10:06 pm

    <p>If i'm not mistaken Windows 10 already has HEVC support, but it is only enabled on PCs with hardware decoding support for it. So, only if you have intel graphics that shipped with Intel's Skylake (or newer) processors, or if you have a graphics card newer than Nvidia's GTX 9xx series, or if you have AMD Radeon R9 graphics or newer.</p>

  • useful windows

    28 August, 2018 - 5:27 pm

    <p>Windows 10 supports HEVC, and supports HEIF through an extension downloaded through the Microsoft Store. </p>

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