I’m suddenly having issues w HEIC images in Messages on my iPhone

I started to have this issue after upgrading my iCloud to a larger storage and inexplicably disabled iCloud Photos "Sync this iPhone". What fixed it for me was to reenable this.

Go to Settings > iCloud > Photos > enable "Sync this iPhone"

Edit: this appear to be a good approach too (site reddit.com)

SOLVED: Verizon Digital Secure app doesn’t work on my company’s WiFi. I I had to turn OFF the Safe Wi-Fi when using the companies Wi-Fi. To be fair the app works fine everywhere else. I use it when joining Hot spots such as StarBucks. You may have a different app securing your Wi-Fi connections. Also, you may need to simply turn off a VPN in your settings.

Good Luck 👍

I don't know if this will work for you, but here's how i got around this issue myself. go to your messages app, and tap the search box at the top (with the magnifying glass icon). You'll see categories like "Links" and then "photos" and so on. In the Photos section, click "see all" and scroll (don't click yet) until you see the photos you couldn't originally see in the text chain itself. (You may need to do some chronological guessing if you don't know what the photo was supposed to look like :) When you get to the photos you need (e.g., those that were in HEIC format on the text message), you can tap and hold the photo preview tile and select "COPY". Then copy it into a FOLDER in your "FILES" app on your Iphone. It will convert to JPG.

My sister in law just had this issue. It was because date roaming was on. Once off, all photos appeared. Try that….eric

• Open Settings and go to Messages.
• Inside Messages settings, you should see the iMessage toggle button.
• Turn it off and bck on

It just worked for me.

I just updated my iphone to ios 16.5 and the photos are now accessible, double tap on the image and it now opens.

This was happening to me. Go into settings, cellular data and turn off low data mode. It resolved it!

• Open Settings and go to Messages.
• Inside Messages settings, you should see the iMessage toggle button.
• Turn it off and bck on

It just worked for me.

I reset my phone from ICloud backup and that fixed the issue.

You can still change it from heic to jpg. However, Apple supports the HEIC standard; they were one of the first to do so when the heic standard was released in 2015. It became Apple’s standard in 2017. You can just save it and open it with Finder or the Photos app.

Sqeeky1 wrote:

I’m suddenly having issues w heic images in messages

-system up to date

-connected to internet

-have plenty of storage

so frustrating! I’ve read through prior posts and have turned my phone off, reset but still happens.

anyone else having issues?

is there a fix??!?

thank you!!

Have what issue?

Sqeeky1 wrote:

I get a photo from another iPhone use and can’t see the picture…just says img-heic. Can’t view it, open it, convert it…nothing

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/23f1c61d-7b92-49ed-9ca4-adc8a67a9bf7

Read here https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/tech/heic-to-jpg

Sender may need to do the same thing as well.

I don't see this as an answer, either.

If I have received a photo from someone else in an heic format, I am not able to open it or to convert it to .jpeg. It's simply unusable. It won't even download to my photo library.

What am I missing here?

BTW, my phone camera is already in the compatible setting. This has nothing to do with a photo I took; it has to do with one I am receiving in the Messaging app, sent by someone else.

My situation is similar but different. Today my messages suddenly started showing an icon that a photo was sent but did not show the downloaded photo in the message as usual. And the "placeholder" ID'd it as a HEIF file. I told my daughter to check her camera settings and switch that to "Most compatible" so the photos would be in JPEG format. (I have found most photo developers don't recognize HEIF format.) She checked and said it was already set to "most compatible." So my situation is that incoming photos in messages are now not downloading, and are saying they are in a HEIF format. The senders are telling me their iPhones are set to "Most compatible." So is this a glitch or what? Using iPhone 12 Pro Max, ios 16.5. Restarted the phone several times, to no avail.