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Comment by vwcx | Hacker News Reader

It's a great surprise to realize you've been shooting HEIFs for months and then can't open them on your MBP because you're "only" on El Capitan.

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All the default methods of transferring photos out of the iOS ecosystem will convert the photos to JPEG transparently. This is only a problem with third-party software or if you manually disable the compatibility option.

That shouldn't be a surprise, because in order for that to happen you'd have to disable the compatible export option in iOS that's on by default. Unless you used some 3rd party image transfer that wasn't as thoughtful?

The default Formats setting for the built-in camera app is "High efficiency", which saves as HEIF/HEIVC. You have to change it to "Most compatible" to use JPEG/H.264.

The default export option is ‘automatic’ which converts to jpeg when exporting to anything other than new Apple OS devices. The format for taking the photos is irrelevant.

That's in the Photos app settings. I have no idea if Google Photos does automatic conversion too.

I think someone mentioned before in this thread the syncing between Android and iPhone using Google Photos and finding the format incompatible on Android.

Or if you upload everything to Google Photos, and then realize that you can't download these pictures on windows after downloading them from Photos, because while GP supports HEIF, Windows does not.

Windows 10 has full HEIF support, but you need to install the official plugin from Microsoft separately from the store (presumably for licensing reasons).

There is an option on iOS that says

TRANSFER TO MAC OR PC - Automatic - Keep Originals

Automatically transfer photos and videos in a compatible format, or always transfer the original file without checking for compatibility.

tl-dr; you can set it to automatic and when you backup via itunes the images will be jpegs

Or use this free software

https://imazing.com/heic

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