On my iPhone 6e, I've located the setting to disable the HEIF format and revert to JPG, however the setting appears to be tied to HEVC encoding for video as well. Is there any way to disable HEIF while keeping HEVC enabled?
I'd like to keep HEVC enabled as the efficiency benefits are quite tangible and it's widely supported, but HEIF isn't yet and I have no interest in the live photo feature.
iPhone 16e
therealknewman wrote:
I'd like to keep HEVC enabled as the efficiency benefits are quite tangible and it's widely supported, but HEIF isn't yet and I have no interest in the live photo feature.
The High Efficiency format is not required to take Live Photos. We can take Live Photos even with High Efficiency disabled, it is just saving plenty of storage when taking Live Photos or other photos.
Compared to JPEG the HEIC files are using just 50% of the storage of a JPEG of the same quality.
Do you need all photos as JPEG or just to photos you want to share or edit in an external editor?
therealknewman wrote:
HEIC is a different story
.heic indeed seems quite complex (see diagram in the link below). And Sequoia 15.5 QuickLook can't yet properly rotate the newer iOS/iPadOS 18 .heic format.
https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=17169.msg91984#msg91984
therealknewman wrote:
I'd prefer to stick with the most widely supported format. The benefits of HEIC aren't worth it for me; storage is cheap.
Be prepared to handle avif and webp image codecs, av1 and vp9 movie codecs and opus audio codecs which are slowly gaining also macOS support. I wonder which of those codecs (including jpeg, heic, H.264, H.265, AAC) are most widely supported or have even dropped support after 10-20 years.
No, they are connected in the settings. A workaround is to convert .heic to .jpg if some site insists using the old format.
Thanks for the info, that's too bad. I need my photos in JPG format, the majority of applications/services I use will not support HEIC. I would also prefer not to have my collection split between different formats.
Where are you using the external editors? On your iPhone or on a computer?
I am doing most of the editing on my Mac by calling the external Editor directly from Photos. And there it does not matter, if the photo is saved as HEIC or JPEG or even RAW - Photos will pass it to the external editor as a TIFF, unless I am using the External Editors extension, where I can select the format to be used. Unfortunately, the external Editors extension is no longer available at the App Store.
I'm not an Apple user whatsoever aside from this phone, if Apple wasn't so terrible about iMessage I wouldn't have an iPhone. I'm sure there are many editors I could use that support HEIC, but I'd prefer to stick with the most widely supported format. The benefits of HEIC aren't worth it for me; storage is cheap.
Fully prepared, as those codecs you listed are widely supported and used already outside of the Apple universe. I routinely encode in AV1 and Opus. HEIC is a different story, thus I'd prefer to avoid it.
😧 Thanks for warning us, Matti!
Is there any way to disable the HEIF format while keeping the HEVC enabled?
