HEIC vs HEIF: what's the difference?

Is HEIF the same as HEIC?

Almost. HEIF, the High Efficiency Image File Format, is a container: a box-based file structure, standardised as ISO/IEC 23008-12, that holds one or more images plus thumbnails, metadata and extra layers. It does not compress anything itself. The compression comes from a codec stored inside. When that codec is HEVC (also called H.265), the file is called HEIC and normally ends in .heic. iPhones, iPads and many Android phones write exactly that.

So the honest answer to “HEIC vs HEIF” is that HEIC is one kind of HEIF. The words are used loosely: Apple's support pages and Samsung's camera menu say HEIF, while the files they produce are HEIC. To see what any file really is, open it in the HEIC Inspector, which reads the brand stored in the file rather than trusting its name.

What is the difference between HEIF and HEIC?

The standard's abstract (opens in a new tab) describes HEIF as an interoperable storage format for a single image, a collection of images and image sequences, and says it “specifies brands” for images coded with HEVC, AVC, JPEG, VVC and EVC. AVIF, from the Alliance for Open Media, is defined as a conformant HEIF file holding AV1. Uncompressed pixels can be carried too, under a separate standard, ISO/IEC 23001-17; libheif, the open-source library our tools use, lists encoders and decoders for all of these.

What do .heic, .heif, .hif, .heics, .heifs and .avif mean?

Two details trip people up. First, .hif is not a separate format: it is a short extension that the Library of Congress (opens in a new tab) says was added to the standard in a 2020 corrigendum and is used by Canon for HEVC-coded HEIF. Second, sequence files (.heics, .heifs) are not Live Photos. An iPhone Live Photo is a still image and a separate movie; see Live Photos and HEIC.

How to tell what a file really is

A HEIF file has no fixed magic number. IANA's registration (opens in a new tab) says so explicitly; instead, the file starts with an ftyp box that lists a major brand and the compatible brands the file conforms to. We generated four small files with open-source encoders and read those boxes back.

• heic means HEVC Main or Main Still Picture profile. Both are 8 bits per sample with 4:2:0 colour sampling, according to the profile definitions.
• heix means a higher HEVC profile: Main 10 or the range extensions. Our 10-bit encode switched to it on its own, and the HEIC Inspector showed the Range Extensions profile inside.
• mif1 and msf1 are the generic HEIF brands for still images and sequences. On its own, mif1 tells a reader the structure, not the codec.
• avif and avis mean AV1, and miaf declares conformance with MIAF, a set of interoperability rules that the AVIF specification requires.

Software that “supports HEIF” may still fail on a given file, because reading the container and decoding the codec are separate jobs. A program can parse every box of an AVIF and still show nothing if it has no AV1 decoder. HEIC File Checker and the HEIC Inspector both report the brand and the codec, so you know which decoder is missing.

Which devices write HEIC, HEIF or .HIF?

The pattern is clear even with gaps. Phones write .heic. Cameras write .HIF, usually for 10-bit or HDR pictures, and the manufacturers expect you to view them in their own software or convert them. Sony's support page, for example, recommends converting to JPEG for playback on other devices and to TIFF for editing, because TIFF keeps the 10-bit gradation. A per-brand reading of the makers' manuals, the 10-bit and 4:2:2 profiles and what opens these files is in HIF files: HEIF from Canon, Sony, Nikon and Fujifilm.

Will a .heif or .hif file open where .heic opens?

If it holds HEVC, the decoding is identical, so the question is whether the software looks at the extension first. Some do. Three documented cases:

• Windows. Microsoft's HEIF Image Extension listing says the HEVC Video Extensions package must be installed to view images in HEIF files “that use the .heic, .hif or .heif file extensions”, and the AV1 Video Extension for .avif. All three HEVC extensions are treated alike. See opening HEIC on Windows.
• Photoshop. An Adobe Photoshop product manager wrote in May 2026 that Sony .HIF files “aren't currently supported in Photoshop”, that Photoshop recognises only .heic and .heif, and that renaming .hif to .heif may work on a Mac but is unlikely to on Windows. That is a forum answer from Adobe staff, not documentation.
• Fujifilm. Its manual tells you to change .HIF to .HEIC before viewing on a computer, and says a USB upload from the camera renames them for you.

Should I rename .HIF or .HEIF to .HEIC?

Only when the brand says HEVC (heic or heix) and an app refuses the file because of its name. In that case renaming is harmless and is exactly what Fujifilm recommends. Rename a copy, not the original, so your file names still match any sidecar or catalogue entries. Do not rename an AVIF to .heic: the extension would then promise HEVC and the file holds AV1. If the file still will not open, the problem is the decoder, not the name: convert it with a tool that has its own HEVC decoder, such as HEIC to JPG.

HEIC vs HEIF: which is better?

Neither, because they are not alternatives. A .heif file holding HEVC is bit-for-bit the same kind of file as a .heic, and compresses the same. What does differ:

• The codec inside. HEVC and AV1 are close in efficiency. In our HEIC vs JPG measurements, matching a JPEG saved at quality 85 took a median 82% of the JPEG's bytes as HEIC and 80% as AVIF. AV1 is royalty-free; HEVC is not, which is why only Safari displays HEIC.
• Bit depth. A heix file can store 10 bits per channel; a heic file is 8-bit. Camera HEIF is often 10-bit. In 2017 Apple said iPhone photos use HEVC's Main Still Picture profile, which is 8-bit; we found no current Apple statement on bit depth, so check your own file.
• Compatibility. .heic is the most widely recognised name; .hif is the least.

HEIC vs HEIF vs JPEG

HEIC vs HEIF on iPhone

There is no separate HEIF setting on an iPhone. Settings > Camera > Formats offers High Efficiency, which Apple's documentation describes as HEIF for photos and HEVC for video, and Most Compatible, which writes JPEG and H.264. The High Efficiency photos you get are .HEIC files. Apple lists iPhone 7 and later as able to capture HEIF. When you share to a device that cannot read it, Apple says the photo “might automatically be shared in a more compatible format, such as JPEG”. More in HEIC on iPhone.

How we checked

Brands. We wrote a 512 × 384 synthetic gradient as an 8-bit HEIC and a 10-bit HEIC with pillow-heif 1.8.0 (libheif 1.23.4, x265 4.2), as an AVIF still with pillow-avif-plugin 1.6.0, and as a one-second AVIF animation with FFmpeg's libaom-av1 encoder, then parsed each file's ftyp and meta boxes. The script is scripts/benchmarks/heic-vs-heif-brands.py in the site's repository. These are encoder defaults, not camera or iPhone files, and other software can list compatible brands in a different order or add more.

Devices. Every device statement comes from the maker's own manual or support page, opened on 2026-10-11, and is limited to what that page says. Where a maker does not state the extension (Samsung) or a brand, we say so rather than guess. The Sony .HIF statement comes from an Adobe staff reply in Adobe's community forum, and is marked as such.