How to Open HEIC Files on a PC

The row people get wrong is IrfanView. It is an excellent viewer and it is on every “open HEIC free” list, but its own plugin page says the TOOLS plugin (version 4.75.0) handles HEIC and AVIF “with installed codecs/extensions”. It leans on the Windows codec rather than replacing it. If you had the codec you would not be reading this page.

One decoder. A .heic file is a HEIF container holding a still frame encoded with HEVC, the same codec as H.265 video. HEVC is covered by patent pools that charge per device, so Microsoft leaves it out of the base OS and sells it separately. Apple pays for it and ships it, which is why the file opens perfectly on the Mac it came from and nowhere on yours.

Microsoft has split that capability across four Store listings, two free and two paid. These are the live figures from the listings on 27 September 2026:

Availability of the free build depends on the machine, because it is published for devices whose manufacturer already holds the licence. Open the Store, search the exact name, and see whether you get a Get button or nothing. It costs thirty seconds to find out and it saves the dollar.

Three, and they work because they bundle libheif, the open-source HEIF library, rather than asking Windows for a decoder.

XnView MP is the best answer for most people. It reads HEIC and HEIF directly, it browses folders like a proper image manager, and it has a batch convert panel. Its own site describes it as freeware for private or educational use, with a single commercial licence at €29.00. If you are opening holiday photos from a relative, that is free.

GIMP has read and written HEIF through libheif since 2.10.14, released 31 October 2019. Overkill for looking at a photo, correct if you need to open one, crop it, and export a JPEG without installing anything commercial.

ImageMagick is the right tool if you have a folder rather than a photo. On our machine, magick -list format reports HEIC and HEIF as rw+ through libheif 1.21.2 in ImageMagick 7.1.2-22, meaning it both reads and writes them. Check your own build the same way before relying on it, because HEIC support depends on how the binary was compiled.

magick -list format | findstr /i heic
magick mogrify -path jpg -format jpg -quality 80 *.heic

That second line converts every HEIC in the current folder into a jpg subfolder, which has to exist first. Quality 80 is the right default: on our bench it scored 0.9933 SSIM against the source and was 24% smaller than quality 95.

Convert if the photos are going into something else. A CV, an insurance claim, a Facebook upload, a print order, a shared drive your colleagues use. Anywhere the file has to survive contact with software you do not control, JPEG is the format that travels.

Do not convert if you are archiving. The JPEG will be larger than the HEIC and no better: on our measurements a 2,279,634-byte HEIC became a 3,286,067-byte JPEG at quality 80, a 44.1% increase with no gain in detail. Install the decoder, keep the originals, and convert individual files when something demands it.

Web converters are fine for one or two photos and a bad idea for a folder. You are uploading images to a stranger’s server, most free tiers cap you at a handful of files per batch, and a 200-photo holiday is going to take longer than installing XnView MP would have.

Ask the sender to do one of two things. Both take them under a minute and neither costs anything.

Change the phone. Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible makes every future photo a JPEG. It is a permanent change and it costs them roughly 45 to 50% more storage per photo, so it is a fair thing to ask only if this is a recurring handoff.

Change the transfer. If they plug the phone into a Windows PC, Apple documents that the import “might be converted to JPEG or H.264” unless Settings → Photos → Keep Originals is turned on. Leaving that on Automatic means the PC receives JPEGs with nobody doing any work.

Or send them one line. If they are comfortable with Terminal on their Mac, this converts a whole folder before it ever reaches you:

mkdir -p jpg && sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 80 *.heic --out jpg/

That is built into macOS, needs no download, and took 17.35 seconds for 50 twelve-megapixel photos on our test machine. The longer version, including the parallel form that cut it to 2.65 seconds, is in the guide written for the sender.

On this page, almost always. Smol is a macOS app. If you are reading this on a PC, it cannot help you and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Install the free Store package, or install XnView MP, and you are done.

Even on a Mac, this specific job is free. Preview exports HEIC to JPEG in three clicks and sips does a folder in one line. There is no version of “open a HEIC” that needs paid software on either platform.

Where Smol’s $29 is actually worth spending is on the other side of this problem: a Mac owner who sends photos to Windows people constantly and wants a Finder right-click, or a watched folder that converts, resizes and strips GPS from everything dropped into it. That is a recurring workflow, not a one-time file you are trying to open. If that is your situation rather than this one, the batch workflows are here, the format explainer is here, and the full format list is here.