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heic.fyi

Changelog

Material changes to the tools, and corrections to our content, with dates.

We record a change here when it alters what a tool produces or what a reader would do. Found a mistake? Tell us and see how we handle corrections in the editorial policy.

  1. Tool

    Stress-test fixes: white JPG backgrounds, clearer offline errors, safer drops

    • HEIC files with transparency now convert to JPG and PDF with a white background instead of black. PNG and WebP still keep the transparency.
    • If the connection drops after a page has opened and a tool's engine cannot load, the tool now says so and suggests reloading, instead of reporting a damaged file.
    • Dropping a file outside the upload area no longer makes the browser open it and discard the page.

  2. Tool

    Remove HEIC metadata and GPS now edit the file itself

    • The two tools no longer decode and re-encode the photo. They blank the location and metadata inside the original HEIC: same pixels, same file size, still a HEIC. Orientation and colour profile are kept.
    • After cleaning, the tool re-reads its own output and refuses to offer a file that still contains location data or whose image data changed. Choose GPS only, everything, a privacy-safe preset that keeps camera and date, or tick exactly what to remove.
    • A JPG or PNG copy is still available as an option. Tested with generated HEIC files; we have not yet tested files straight from a phone.

  3. Tool

    JPG, PNG and WebP to HEIC are now three purpose-built tools

    • JPG to HEIC reads the JPEG (estimated quality, chroma subsampling, orientation), applies orientation correctly, and can carry the camera Exif across with location off by default.
    • PNG to HEIC measures real transparency and lets you pick the background colour; it warns when a screenshot or graphic will come out softer or larger.
    • WebP to HEIC detects animated WebP and lets you choose the frame where the browser supports it.

  4. Tool

    Four distinct inspection views and a smarter Health Check

    • The EXIF viewer shows what a photo reveals about you; the metadata viewer is a full filterable tag explorer; file info explains the file in plain English; the inspector shows how the container is built.
    • The Health Check now says what a file really is when it is not a HEIC (for example a JPEG renamed .heic) and no longer reports valid AVIF files as damaged.
    • Fixed a bug where EXIF stored in the standard HEIF layout could be missed by the older reader.

  5. Tool

    New: HEIC repair tool

    • Identifies renamed JPEG, PNG, WebP and other files saved as .heic, trims junk before or after a HEIC and repairs a damaged header.
    • For truncated files it recovers the intact tiles or rows of the picture and shows exactly what is missing. It cannot recover data that is not in the file, and cannot detect silent corruption of the pixel data itself.

  6. Tool

    Colour, memory and responsiveness improvements

    • Display P3 photos are now converted to sRGB so colours match what you saw on the phone; an option keeps the wide-gamut profile in JPG and PNG.
    • On iPhone and iPad, outputs above the browser's canvas limit are scaled down with a visible warning instead of failing.
    • Contact sheets use bounded memory, batch tools have a Cancel button, lossless PDFs keep full resolution, and a bad file in a PDF is named with an option to skip it.

  7. Site

    Contact details, editorial policy and sources

    • Added a contact address, an editorial policy describing how we research, test and correct, and a sources page listing the standards and documentation we rely on.
    • Retired the thin /view and /extract hub pages; they now redirect to the HEIC viewer and the thumbnail extractor. Repair is now a tool page of its own.

  8. Correction

    Corrected browser support, encoder and privacy statements

    • Browser support: only Safari 17 and later displays HEIC natively; Chrome, Edge and Firefox do not. Earlier copy implied broader support.
    • The optimize pages claimed the browser has no HEVC encoder. This site ships one (used by the JPG, PNG and WebP to HEIC tools); the real reason compression outputs JPG or WebP is that the encoder has no quality setting.
    • Removed a claim that AVIF can be converted to HEIC (it cannot), and clarified that the page's security policy also allows Google Analytics.
    • Updated Windows codec, Android and HDR JPEG details.

  9. Tool

    Reliability fixes across the converters

    • Fixed a memory leak in the HEIC decoder that could make every file fail after a long session or a large batch.
    • Fixed memory corruption when extracting thumbnails from files that contain more than one.
    • Dropping a whole folder onto a batch tool now works, as the pages said it would; dropping a file on a busy tool no longer navigates away from the page.
    • Safari cannot create WebP files; the tools now say so and suggest JPG or PNG instead of reporting a validation failure.
    • ZIP downloads that fail now show a message, and ZIPs store images without re-compressing them.
    • PDF and ZIP libraries now load only when needed, cutting the initial script size of converter pages by roughly 180 KB (gzip).