Why are my iPhone photos imported as .heic files when uploading them to my Dropbox account?

jannep17 · ‎07-07-2017

Why are my photos from iPhone suddenly imported as .heic files to Dropbox?

This only happened this week, say on Tuesday (July 4th). Has never happened before.

Now I cannot see these photos on the desktop version of Dropbox. On the Dropbox app for iPhone, I see the files (with the ending .heic) but I cannot open them and cannot preview them.

What has happened and how do I fix this?

Sanchez · ‎07-07-2017

Hi @jannep17, welcome to our forum!

I’ve just looked up this .heic file type, and it appears it’s something to do with iPhone’s photos encoding. Apparently, it is a new compression type that keeps file sizes small, in order to save space on your device.

I suggest checking your phone’s settings for this, or contacting Apple support about it. As this is an unusual file type, it is not one that can be previewed on our site currently.

I hope this helps.

Have a great weekend

Sanchez
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support

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View solution in original post

DJ C. · ‎09-20-2017

Hi jannep17! My name is DJ and I'm a product manager at Dropbox. If you've updated your Dropbox iOS app to at least version 64.2.2, you will have an option to upload these new .heic photos iOS 11 introduced as .jpg.

If you select at least one .heic photo by tapping the Plus button > Upload Photos, you will see an option to "Save HEIC Photo as" you can choose upload the .heic photo(s) as JPG or HEIC.

If you use automatic camera uploads, you'll see messaging that asks you to choose how you want to save HEIC photos as through this feature. You can select JPG or HEIC.

You can learn more about this in our Help Center: https://help.dropbox.com/photos-videos/ios-formats

Hope this helps!

View solution in original post

Sanchez · ‎07-07-2017

Hi @jannep17, welcome to our forum!

I’ve just looked up this .heic file type, and it appears it’s something to do with iPhone’s photos encoding. Apparently, it is a new compression type that keeps file sizes small, in order to save space on your device.

I suggest checking your phone’s settings for this, or contacting Apple support about it. As this is an unusual file type, it is not one that can be previewed on our site currently.

I hope this helps.

Have a great weekend

Sanchez
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support

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jannep17 · ‎07-07-2017

Thanks, I cannot change this setting on my phone, so I’ll contact Apple.

websta91 · ‎07-11-2017

I suspect this might have something to do with new photo sizes introduced in iOS 11?

Sounds like a problem for Dropbox to fix, not Apple

JSampo · ‎07-11-2017

This is an IOS 11 beta camera default option. Just change the setting with the camera settings to most compatible and new photos will be encoded into jpg format instead of heic.

FJJ · ‎07-23-2017

Has anyone found a fix for this yet? I desperately need to get access to my photos on my phone but I'm stuck with these useless .heic files on my mac that I can't open.

FJJ · ‎07-23-2017

This doesn't help the photos already on the phone... No way to get them in a usable format on my computer.

Mark · ‎07-23-2017

You need to speak to Apple about the Beta FJJ.

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marcusT · ‎08-15-2017

On your iphone, go to <Camera> setting, sellect <Format> and then sellect <Most Compatible>. The ios11 comes with <High Efficiency> set as default.

Dropbox should update in orther to allow user to use the new HEIF/HEVC format. In the mean time do the above change to see your pics at Dropbox app.

Sanchez · ‎08-24-2017

Hey everybody,

Would you mind taking a minute of your time to fill out a survey sharing your experience using our Dropbox Community? You can access the survey here: http://bit.ly/2lNKIxT

Thank you!

Sanchez
Community Moderator @ Dropbox
dropbox.com/support

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Why are my iPhone photos imported as .heic files when uploading them to my Dropbox account?

Why are my iPhone photos imported as .heic files when uploading them to my Dropbox account?

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