Safelight HEIC → JPG, on your device

Windows 11 won't open your photos.
It's not your fault.

You copied photos off an iPhone and Windows handed you a folder of blank icons. Nothing is broken, nothing is corrupt, and you haven't done anything wrong. The reason is a patent licence, and there are four ways out of it — each with a real cost attached.

Guide Last checked: July 2026 Reading time: 6 min

The short version

A HEIC file is a HEIF container with a photo inside it compressed using HEVC — the same codec as 4K video. HEVC is patented, and shipping a decoder means paying licence fees on every machine it lands on. Microsoft decided not to pay that on your behalf: Windows arrives without HEVC support and sells the HEVC Video Extensions through the Microsoft Store instead.

So Photos opens, thinks about it, and shows you nothing. File Explorer gives you a blank thumbnail. Your file is completely fine — the machine reading it simply doesn't have the key. iPhones have shot HEIC by default since iOS 11 in 2017, which is why this has been quietly annoying people for years.

Four things you can do about it, in the order most people should consider them.

If you just want to see the photos, now

Convert them to JPG in your browser. Nothing is installed, nothing is uploaded, nothing is capped — and JPG opens on every machine you'll ever touch.

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The four options

None of these is universally right. They fix different problems, and two of them fix a problem you might not actually have.

  1. Buy the HEVC Video Extensions from the Microsoft Store

    This teaches Windows itself to read HEIC, so Photos, File Explorer thumbnails and most Windows apps just start working. It's the cleanest fix if you deal with HEICs constantly and want your own machine to behave.

    Be careful here, because the Store has two similarly-named listings and most articles about this conflate them. One is HEVC Video Extensions, which is paid. The other is HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer, which is free but is meant for devices whose manufacturer already licensed the codec — it is not something every user can simply install, and its availability has changed over time. Search the Store on your own machine and see what it actually offers you and at what price. We're not going to quote a figure that might be wrong on your account, in your region, this month.

    The trade-off: it fixes your PC. The colleague you email the photo to still sees a blank icon.

  2. Convert the photos to JPG

    JPG is thirty years old and there is nothing left in working order that can't read it. Converting fixes viewing, sharing, uploading, printing and archiving in one move, and it needs no install and no admin rights — which matters on a work laptop where you can't install anything anyway.

    The trade-off is size, and it's real: JPG output runs about 168% of the HEIC at the default quality of 0.85. A 2 MB photo lands around 3.4 MB. Every HEIC-to-JPG converter does this, including the ones that upload your photos to a server to do it, because it's the codecs and not the tool. There's also a quality cost, though at 0.85 you won't see it at normal viewing sizes.

    This converter runs in your browser, so your photos aren't uploaded anywhere — worth caring about when the folder in question holds documents, whiteboards or your kids. There's a ten-second test on another page that proves it rather than asking you to believe it.

  3. Tell the iPhone to shoot JPG instead

    Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible. From then on the camera records JPG, and this problem never happens to you again with a new photo.

    Two honest caveats. It applies only to photos taken from now on — the thousands already on your phone stay HEIC, so this fixes the future and none of the present. And you're giving up roughly half your storage efficiency: HEVC stores the same picture at the same quality in about half the bytes of JPG, which is the entire reason Apple switched. On a 64 GB phone that's a genuine sacrifice; on a 512 GB phone you'll likely never notice.

  4. Install a viewer that brings its own decoder

    Image viewers in the IrfanView / XnView class bundle their own decoding, so they open HEIC on a Windows box that otherwise can't, without the Store being involved. If you mostly want to look at the photos, this works, and most such viewers will batch-convert too.

    The trade-off: this fixes viewing on the machine where you installed it. It doesn't fix File Explorer thumbnails, it doesn't fix the website that rejects your upload, and it doesn't fix the person you're sending the photo to. It also requires installing software, which is exactly the thing a locked-down work PC won't let you do.

Which one do you actually want?

Split it by what you're trying to do, because "open HEIC on Windows" is usually two different problems wearing one coat.

  • You need to look at your own photos on your own PC, often. The Store extension, if it's available to you at a price you like. Failing that, a viewer that bundles a decoder.
  • You need to send, upload, print or keep them. Convert to JPG. No amount of fixing your machine fixes the recipient's machine, and a decoder you have to buy per computer is not a format you want a family archive to depend on.
  • You're on a work laptop with no admin rights. Convert to JPG in the browser. It's the only option here that installs nothing.
  • You're tired of this happening. Set the phone to Most Compatible for future photos, and convert the backlog once.

Things that look like fixes and aren't

  • Renaming .heic to .jpg. This does nothing. The extension is a label; the bytes inside are still HEVC. Windows will now fail to open it while looking confident about it.
  • Waiting for a Windows update. The blocker is a licence, not a bug. There's nothing queued to fix.
  • Assuming the file is corrupt. It isn't. Mail it to any iPhone and it'll open instantly, which is a decent two-minute sanity check if you're genuinely unsure.

Questions people actually ask

Why can't I open HEIC on Windows 11?
Windows ships without an HEVC decoder, because HEVC is patented and licensing it costs money per machine. Microsoft sells the HEVC Video Extensions separately in the Store instead. Your file is fine; the machine lacks the codec.
Is the HEVC extension free?
There are two listings, and this is where the confusion comes from. "HEVC Video Extensions" is paid. "HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer" is free but intended for devices whose maker already licensed the codec, so it isn't installable by everyone. Availability has shifted over the years — check the Store on your own machine rather than trusting a price quoted on a page like this one.
Will converting to JPG lose quality?
Slightly. JPG is lossy and the photo is re-encoded once, but at the default 0.85 you won't see it at normal viewing sizes. The size goes the other way: expect around 168% of the original. Push toward 1.0 for near-identical and larger, or PNG for lossless at roughly twelve times the size.
How do I stop my iPhone making HEIC files?
Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible. It only affects photos taken after you change it, and it costs you roughly half your storage efficiency, because JPG needs about twice the bytes for the same picture.
Does Windows 10 have the same problem?
Yes — this is about the HEVC licence, not about which version of Windows you run. The same four options apply.
Can I convert a whole folder of them at once?
Yes. There's no file limit and no daily cap here, so a few hundred at a time is normal — the batch guide covers getting them off the phone and the size arithmetic on a big folder.

Keep reading

Turn the blank icons into photos

No install, no admin rights, no account, no cap. The files stay on your machine, which you can verify by switching off your Wi-Fi and converting anyway.

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