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Guide to Retrieve HEIC Photos on iPhone X/8 Plus

author Elsie Wesley
date Monday, October 23, 2017

Everyone said iOS 11 had brought .heic format in photos but I cannot see anything about HEIC on my iPhone 6s. Why?

Do you have the same questions as what I wonder? I have got rid of my confusion because this new change only occurs on iPhone 7 and later. Thus, I cannot view or change the format of photos on my 6s. However, we still should get to know about HEIC photos here.

If you own a new iPhone 8/X or iPhone 7, you can mange the High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF) which can save your phone storage, especially useful for those iPhone with 32GB, 64GB. When you hate this format, you can change it as normal formats by customizing the settings. Nevertheless, once you have deleted pictures in HEIC format on your iPhone, don't be anxious and they can be retrieved as other photos in .jpg or .png format via FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery (opens new window).

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Recover HEIC Photos on iPhone X/8/7

Part 1. Directly Recover HEIC Photos from iPhone

With the FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery program, you are able to recover the lost or accidentaly deleted HEIC on iPhone X/8/7 and iPad direclty without backup copies. Now, let's see how to batch retrieve HEIC photos on iPhone in details.

Step 1. After you download and install the FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery, just launch it.

Step 2. Choose "iPhone Data Recovery > Recover from iOS Device" and connect your iPhone to computer via a USB cable. Click on the "Sart Scan" button to begin scanning the data from iPhone.

FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery

Step 3. Now, the program would scan your iPhone, looking for the deleted photos. After the scanning is done, you are able to preview the HEIC photos by clicking the relevant items on the left pane of the program.

Step 4. Selecting the HEIC items and click on the "Recover" button to get them back on your computer.

Recover HEIC Photos from iPhone

Tips: As we all known, the HEIC photos cannot be viewed on a Windows PC or on the Mac with a earlier OS version (actually, only the High Sierra is compatible). So you need to convert the HEIC to JPG, PNG or other file format. You can head to this page: Safely and Freely Convert HEIC/HEIF to JPG/PNG (opens new window) to learn how to solve the issue.

Part 2. Retrieve from iTunes Backup

Step 1. Launch FonePaw iPhone Data Recovery and then go into "Recover from iTunes Backup File" to choose a backup.

Launch iPhone Data Recovery

Step 2. Analyze the backup. If you have locked it before, please de-encrypt it. You're allowed to select the iTunes backup from your local folder when the program cannot show what you need. Next, click "Start Scan".

Step 3. As the iTunes backup file has been scanned, you can view all items on the backup. You can select what you want to export to PC with "Recover" button.

Preview HEIC Photos

Part 3. Re-gain from iCloud Backup

  1. Move to "Recover from iCloud Backup File" on the left. Sign into iCloud with typing your Apple ID and Password.

Recover from iCloud

  1. When you have logged in, all previous backups are listed so that you can select the ideal one to download according to the time or name before extraction.

Select iCloud Backup

  1. Preview all data one by one as you like. For getting back HEIC photos, please go to camera roll or photo stream to find them out.

  2. Get the deleted pictures back on your computer.

Check iCloud Bakcup Files

Extra Tips: How to Enable/Disable High Efficiency Image Format

Don't like this format of photos? You are able to disable High Efficiency Image Format on your iPhone 7/8/X.

  1. Enter "Settings" and swipe down for "Camera" option.

  2. Tap "Formats" to select "Most Compatible" to disable HEIF while now it is enabled in the following screen.

Note: "High Efficiency" will save the images in HEIF/HEIC format while "Most Compatible" will always keep them in JPEG/H.264. Actually, the former one can reduce the size of the pictures.

  1. If it asks you to select "Automatic" or "Keep Originals", here suggest you to choose the first one so that you can keep the items on compatible format when transferring to PC/Mac.

Disable HEIC Photos