Why Windows won't open your iPhone photos
You emailed some photos from your iPhone to a Windows machine, and now you have a folder of files
ending in .heic that Windows Photos refuses to display. It offers to sell you something from the
Microsoft Store. You did not expect opening a photograph to involve a purchase.
Here is what is actually going on, and how to get out of it.
What HEIC is, and why Apple uses it
Since iOS 11, iPhones have saved photos as HEIC rather than JPG. HEIC — High Efficiency Image Container — stores the same photograph at roughly half the file size, using compression derived from modern video codecs. On a phone with 128 GB of storage and ten thousand photos, halving the space is a serious win, and the quality difference against JPG is genuinely negligible.
Apple’s decision was reasonable. The problem is everything outside Apple.
Why Windows makes you pay
HEIC’s compression is covered by patents administered by a licensing pool. Apple pays for its devices. Microsoft, rather than pay a per-copy fee to include the codec in every Windows installation, ships Windows without it and offers the “HEVC Video Extensions” package in the Microsoft Store for a small fee.
This is not Microsoft being obstructive; it is the predictable outcome of a patent-encumbered format becoming a phone default. It is also exactly why the industry has been so keen on royalty-free alternatives like AVIF.
Fix 1: Stop your iPhone making HEIC files
The cleanest fix is upstream. On your iPhone:
- Open Settings
- Tap Camera, then Formats
- Choose Most Compatible
New photos will be saved as JPG. Existing photos stay HEIC — this changes the future, not the past. You will use more storage, but you will stop having this problem.
There is a second setting worth knowing about. Under Settings → Photos, scroll to Transfer to Mac or PC and select Automatic. With that set, iOS converts HEIC to JPG during the transfer when you plug into a computer. Leave it on Keep Originals and it hands over the raw HEIC files.
Fix 2: Convert the files you already have
For photos already sitting on your machine, converting is the answer. Our HEIC to JPG converter runs in your browser — drop the files in and download JPGs. Nothing is uploaded, which matters more than usual for personal photographs.
If the images might be edited later, convert to PNG instead: PNG is lossless, so subsequent saves will not degrade them. The files will be considerably larger.
Fix 3: Buy the codec
The Microsoft Store package costs about a dollar and makes Windows treat HEIC like any other image format — thumbnails in Explorer, previews in Photos, opening in most applications. If you regularly receive HEIC files from other people, it is money well spent.
Note there are two similarly named packages. The one you want is HEVC Video Extensions. A free variant, “HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer”, occasionally appears and works on some machines, but it is not reliably available.
Fix 4: Use software that already understands HEIC
Several free applications handle HEIC without any extra purchase:
- IrfanView with its plugin pack, a long-standing free Windows image viewer
- GIMP 2.10 and later, which imports HEIC directly
- Google Photos and Dropbox, which convert on upload
- Any modern browser — Chrome, Edge and Firefox all decode HEIC now
That last point is the one people miss. The browser already on your machine can read these files, which is precisely why an in-browser converter works at all.
Which fix should you pick?
If the photos are yours and this will keep happening, change the iPhone setting — it solves the problem permanently. If you have a batch of files right now and want them dealt with in the next thirty seconds, convert them. If other people send you HEIC files constantly, buy the codec so Windows stops treating them as alien.
What you should not do is upload family photographs to a random converter that emails you a download link. The conversion is not hard enough to justify handing your pictures to a stranger.