High Sierra will not import HEIC files

I see two other questions from people with the same problem, and there was one solution which worked, and one suggestion:

• the suggestion: "have you tried Image Capture instead of Photos?"
• the solution: if using a 3rd party cable from your phone, try replacing with an Apple cable.

macOS High Sierra 10.13 was the first to support .heic images (and H.265/HEVC movies). But it does not seem to support the newest .heic flavors anymore.

I tested my 238 .heic images and High Sierra QuickLook and Preview.app does not open 9 of them which were shot with iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 16 Pro ("The file nnnn.heic could not be opened. It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn't recognize"). One thing in common with all unsupported .heic seems to be that they now have ColorProfiles tag (and related tags) like:

exiftool -a -G1 -s -fileOrder5 FileName -ColorProfiles .
[QuickTime]     ColorProfiles                   : nclx

All compatible .heic were 8-bit and most incompatible are 10-bit but one incompatible .heic did have only 8-bit tags so bitness does not seem to be the culprit:

exiftool -a -G1 -s -fileOrder5 FileName '-*BitDepth*' .
[QuickTime]     BitDepthLuma                    : 8
[QuickTime]     BitDepthChroma                  : 8

jackygage wrote:

We have two iPhone 15s at home, and images taken after November 24, 2024, on one iPhone 15 stopped displaying, while images taken after December 4, 2024, on the other iPhone 15 also stopped opening. However, older .HEIC images from before those dates still open fine.

After checking the metadata, I noticed that newer images include ColorProfiles, whereas older ones do not.

Is there an iOS version change in those iPhone .heic images that do not open anymore in High Sierra?

I checked such .heic images and all were iOS 18.0.1 or later after October 2024. There were a few dating back to March 2024 but their software info was apparently deleted when they were routed through WhatsApp.

For example, iOS/iPadOS 18 introduced a new 'FullFrameRatePlaybackIntent' movie tag that Windows does not fully support at the moment.

High frame rate playback option in iOS/iP… - Apple Community

https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=16824.0

p.s. You can check the related tags with something like:

exiftool -a -G1 -s -fileOrder5 FileName -ext heic -Software -Model -ColorProfiles .
======== ./2024-1022-1744-57.heic
[IFD0]          Software                        : 18.0.1
[IFD0]          Model                           : iPhone 16 Pro
[QuickTime]     ColorProfiles                   : nclx

Or move the incompatible candidates with that 'ColorProfiles' tag to a '0_ColorProfiles' subfolder with:

exiftool -if '$ColorProfiles' '-Directory=./0_ColorProfiles' .

You can convert to any format including png and pdf among others. If you do a Google search for how to do this there are sites and apps that come up. Warning : you MAY have to do the conversion on the phone first.

Matti, thank you for helping me understand why recent .HEIC images from my iPhone no longer open on my iMac. My iMac, a 27-inch mid-2011 model, is running High Sierra 10.13.6. We have two iPhone 15s at home, and images taken after November 24, 2024, on one iPhone 15 stopped displaying, while images taken after December 4, 2024, on the other iPhone 15 also stopped opening. However, older .HEIC images from before those dates still open fine.

After checking the metadata, I noticed that newer images include ColorProfiles, whereas older ones do not. Your comment, "But it does not seem to support the newest .heic flavors anymore," helped me realize that these must be newer versions of .HEIC files, which my old iMac can’t handle. Fortunately, they still open on my old MacBook Air running Big Sur 11.7.10.

If anyone has more insight into this issue, I’d love to hear it! Like when did Apple make this change to their .HEIC files? Was this announced somewhere? I haven't been able to find any info about this online, other than here. I was freaking out when my backed-up files wouldn’t open, especially with the error message suggesting they might be "damaged." Thanks again!