How can I view .HEIC photos on Linux?

Question

How can I view .HEIC photos (the new default format on iOS 11) on a Linux desktop, without uploading them to some cloud service? Is there an image viewer, image converter, or browser with support for .HEIC, either released or not-yet-released?

Solution 1

For local conversion, this worked for me in Debian. Just downloaded the static build, ran the example conversion command, everything worked:

https://github.com/monostream/tifig

Solution 2

On Ubuntu (Debian distro) the easiest way is probably to run:

sudo apt install heif-gdk-pixbuf

For Fedora and other RPM-based distros use:

sudo dnf install libheif

After this, e.g. Eye of Gnome eog image.heic will display your image.

Solution 3

to convert a heic image to be able to view it as usual,

sudo apt-get install libheif-examples

then convert image to jpg:

heif-convert input.heic output.jpg

then view the image using any image viewer - here's an example:

ristretto  output.jpg

Solution 4

For the record, ImageMagick supports it. Somehow magick display image.heic gave me weird results, but converting was fine:

magick convert image.heic image.jpg

Solution 5

.heic may be the file name extension, but the format is more commonly known as HEIF, the High Efficiency Image File format. There’s an open source implementation from Nokia here: http://nokiatech.github.io/heif/

View more solutions

Comments

[G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica']

Junior, the question explicitly says “without uploading them to some cloud service”.

[Marco Massenzio]

not to mention, that it does not really work: I'm here exactly because my Dropbox files (uploaded from an iPhone) show up as .heic files on my Ubuntu desktop, and I cannot open them

[Elliptical view]

On Debian 10.3 I have to use convert-im6.q16 rather than magick. (From 'imagemagick' package v 8:6.9.10.23+..). (Also GIMP opens them, but it's more awkward and much more slow.) Thanks!

[Camille Goudeseune]

Yes, 0.2.0 runs on Ubuntu 18. github.com/monostream/tifig/releases/download/0.2.0/…

[jchook]

Apparently ffmpeg does not yet support HEIF?

[gargoylebident]

Just took a photo on an iPhone and ran the .heic file through ffmpeg with the above command. Converted to png without any problems. Not sure why the people in that post are having issues.

[onetwopunch]

v0.2.2 works great as a static download on Ubuntu 20.04 as wel

[Walf]

At the time of writing, this no longer works with photos from newer iOS versions. You will get the error message: "Grid configuration not found! tifig currently only supports .heic images created on iOS 11 devices."

[toraritte]

for img in *{heic,HEIC}; do convert "${img}"{,.jpg}; done (Not sure how portable it is though, and it does just append the JPEG extension at the end - although I like converting like that as it gives a sense of "format history".)

[Elliptical view]

Not working for me. I'm seeing: $ ffmpeg -i IMG_9256.heic IMG_9256.png ffmpeg version 4.1.6-1~deb10u1 Copyright (c) 2000-2020 the FFmpeg developers built with gcc 8 (Debian 8.3.0-6) configuration: --prefix=/usr --extra-version='1~deb10u1' --toolchain=hardened --libdir=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --incdir=/usr/include/x86_64-linux-gnu --arch=amd64 --enable-gpl --disable-stripping --enable-avresample --disable-filter=resample --enable-avisynth --enable-gnutls --enable-ladspa --enable-libaom --enable-libass --enable-libbluray --enable-libbs2b --enable-libcaca --enable-libcdi

[Elliptical view]

o --enable-libcodec2 --enable-libflite --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfribidi --enable-libgme --enable-libgsm --enable-libjack --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libmysofa --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libopenmpt --enable-libopus --enable-libpulse --enable-librsvg --enable-librubberband --enable-libshine --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsoxr --enable-libspeex --enable-libssh --enable-libtheora --enable-libtwolame --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwavpack --enable-libwebp --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-libzmq

[Elliptical view]

--enable-libzvbi --enable-lv2 --enable-omx --enable-openal --enable-opengl --enable-sdl2 --enable-libdc1394 --enable-libdrm --enable-libiec61883 --enable-chromaprint --enable-frei0r --enable-libx264 --enable-shared libavutil 56. 22.100 / 56. 22.100 libavcodec 58. 35.100 / 58. 35.100 libavformat 58. 20.100 / 58. 20.100 libavdevice 58. 5.100 / 58. 5.100 libavfilter 7. 40.101 / 7. 40.101 libavresample 4. 0. 0 / 4. 0. 0 libswscale 5. 3.100 / 5. 3.100 libswresample 3. 3.100 / 3. 3.100 libpostproc 55. 3.100 / 55. 3.100

[Elliptical view]

[mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x55a711614740] moov atom not found IMG_9256.heic: Invalid data found when processing input

[Elliptical view]

The heif-convert step worked. Not sure what 'ristretto' is?

[Darren Ng]

@Ellipticalview Ristretto Image Viewer

[Franva]

This is the better and less setup required. After installed "heif-gdk-pixbuf" you can open the heic files directly, if not, just right click the heic file and "Open in Another Application" --> Image Viewer

[Nick S]

Yeah this is newer but now clearly the correct answer.

[Community]

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[Francesco Potortì]

Any image viewer wold work: mentioning a specific one as part of the solution workflow the way you did is out of the scope of the question, so it looks like an advertisement...

[jmarina]

@FrancescoPotortì the answer is now updated to explicitly state that any image viewer would work; I used ristretto as an example because it was already installed

[fracz]

For all files in directory: for i in *.HEIC; do heif-convert "$i" "$i.jpg"; done

[Ondra Žižka]

I woud refrain from installing archives from an unknown GitHub repo - can contain anything.

[Sridhar Sarnobat]

Doesn't work for me on Ubuntu 20. I just get a white panel.

[qneill]

Like @fracz but without the "file.HEIC.jpg" double extension: for i in *.HEIC; do heif-convert "$i" "${i%.HEIC}.jpg"; done