Somebody sent me some HEIC files, in an email.
First I’ve ever encountered.
Is there a free way to view them, & then convert them to jpegs?
One that works?
You can view them online here: https://speedtesting.herokuapp.com/heicviewer/
Or if you’re on Windows, download these two codec packs to make them work:
There are a few free programs that can view and save them too, like FastStone Image Viewer, or the simpler view-only qView.
IrfanView doesn’t support them without the extensions.
You can also just ask your friend to save them as JPEG and send them to you. HEIC was one of those annoying things that Apple decided to unilaterally do without regard to how it affects non-Apple users 
Annoyingly, Apple decided to make HEIC the default image format on the iPhone. So if an iPhone user sends you a picture they took on their phone, it’s going to be HEIC unless they actually bothered to go into their phone’s settings and change it. (I see I was ninja’ed here).
That said, on my Windows PC I can double click them and they open in the default image viewer that comes with Windows just fine. I don’t recall having to install any extensions to view them, although Microsoft maybe pushed some update to me that enabled that capability without me knowing. Then if I need a JPEG, because sites like Flickr don’t support HEIC yet, I can just do “save as” and sepect .jpg.
It simply will not open.
BTW–Not the answer you were hoping for, my Firefox adblock keeps me from using the speedtesting site, even when I disable adblocking. Or perhaps speedtesting don’t like the Fox.
You could try renaming the files and changing the extensions to .jpg. You’ll get a warning, but that has worked for me in the past. Maybe make a copy of one of them to test it on.
Hmm, did any of the other utils work? You can also try Paint.net or XnView MP.
If nothing else works, I can try to make you another web-based version, but honestly it’s going to be quicker just to ask your friend to send them to you as JPEGs instead. This is on Apple, not you.
I can open HEIC files from my iPhone downloaded to Windows and open in MSPaint. (And MSPaint has the option “save as…” select JPG)
And Windows file explorer has no problem in “Extra Large Icon” mode viewing these files.
I would be very surprised if Macs did not handle HEIC.
If they are embedded in an email - (left) click once on the picture in the email. You should see tiny squares appear in the corners of the picture, indicating it has the focus of the mouse. Now you can right click and save the picture (as HEIC) and then fix as above…
Modern Macs have the HEIC codec as part of their operating system. Newer Windowses should too. But older ones might need the codec* packs (linked to above) manually installed, and/or possibly a different image viewer if it’s really old.
OP didn’t specify which Windows they’re using (if at all).
* A “codec” is just the name of software that encodes/decodes a certain file format. In this case, HEIC is a subset of HEIF, the High Efficiency Image Format
Problem solved.
The Sender sent jpegs.
And to think… Apple could’ve saved thousands of people-hours and endless headaches by just never pushing HEIC in the first place. Bandwidth is cheap. Time is valuable.
True dat.
In Samsung Galaxy phone/tablet versions you have the option to either send your pics in HEIC or Jpeg. Everybody complained when I sent HEIC so now I choose Jpeg.
When I first ran across HEIC I had to google where it came from. It’s buried in iPhone Settings> Camera > Format as “High Efficiency” vs “most compatible” (JPG). You have to read the fine print to discover what that means and they call it HEIF.
I assume it was because it was the default with my new iPhone 14 until I turned it off.
Once it’s taken a picture, that’s the format. I will send the pic in that format. I read somewhere that if you edit the picture on your phone after taking it, it will then save it as JPG instead…
I was using Windows 11 to see HEIC and edit it with MSPaint. I haven’t tested earlier versions of Windows.
I guess they think patents are valuable.
Old lady watching military parade: “Just look! Ten thousand soldiers, and they’re all out of step except my son Johnny.”
Except the format is objectively better as a container for photography. The images compress smaller, the compression itself is less lossy, and the format works more like a RAW image when it comes to editing. Color correction and image enhancing edits are non-destructive, and the changes can be rolled back or altered after the edit with lo loss of quality.
Sure, I believe that (as a former amateur photographer myself who frequently worked in RAW). But I’ve also been around formats long enough to have seen Real, JPEG2000, WMA, APNG, Bink, etc. come and go, and later, WebP, AVIF, x265, AV1, JPEGXL, etc. They all offer various benefits for certain use cases, but by and large I’d argue that JPEG, MP4, and MP3 are fine. It would’ve been nice if Apple allowed the saving of HEIF originals but defaulted to sharing in more compatible everyday formats.
But they do. I don’t recall changing any settings but if I go to the Photos app on my phone, select an image (or two, or three, etc) and click ‘share’ to email them, it’s JPGs that get sent out, not the HEIC originals. The only way I get HEIC files is if I Airdrop them to one of my laptops, but if I’m using Airdrop, then I’m staying in the ecosystem so the format is totally fine.
I don’t think they make that very clear in the settings, as above. Or we wouldn’t have situations like this OP to begin with…