Open iPhone HEIC photos on Android

Which galleries read HEIF and which show a grey tile

Android lists HEIF decoding from version 8.0. The file must still be supported by the particular gallery or upload app. Try opening it in a different viewer; a blank tile alone does not identify whether the issue is format support, a damaged download or a preview failure.

Check the copy you already have

Open the file details and read the name. A copy that came through a chat app has usually been recompressed to JPEG on the way, so if it draws, nothing here applies to you and you are finished. A name still ending in .heic and a grey square is the copy that needs converting.

Do not go looking for a system setting first. There is no HEIC switch in Android settings, and the phone is not misconfigured. One file on the device is in a format the app in front of you will not decode, and that is the whole problem.

What Google Photos does with it, and what it passes on

If the file is already on the phone, open it in Google Photos before anything else. It decodes HEIC and shows the picture, which is enough when you only wanted to see the photo your cousin sent.

A viewer opening the picture does not establish that the next upload accepts HEIC. Sharing or editing can also produce a different file. Check the extension and dimensions of the actual copy you select for the upload.

A Play Store HEIC viewer changes nothing outside itself

Those viewers decode inside their own sandbox. Installing one gets you a second app that can show the photo and leaves the gallery, the banking app, and the upload field exactly as they were. Some of them also want storage access to every photo on the phone to do it.

The one case where a viewer earns its place is a phone you cannot update and a folder of HEIC you only ever want to look at. Anything that has to leave the phone needs the file changed, not a new reader on this device.

Convert on the phone, in Chrome

No PC is involved. Chrome on Android can upload from Files or Downloads, and the decode runs on the server with libheif, so a file from a current iPhone does not defeat it the way a browser-side demo does.

HEIC to JPG takes the batch. When the field also names a maximum size, put the JPEG through a KB cap afterwards. Use HEIC to PNG when you need a PNG image; PNG does not preserve an editable layer stack.

1. In Chrome, tap the drop area on HEIC to JPG and pick the .heic from Files, Downloads, or the chat folder. Up to 10 files, 20 MB each.
2. Take the JPEG, or the ZIP if there were several.

Where the JPEG lands, and what the upload field sees

Chrome saves into Downloads. The media scanner usually indexes it within seconds and the tile appears in the gallery; when it does not, move the file into Pictures and the gallery picks it up on its next pass. The photo is now a plain 8-bit JPEG, which is what an Android gallery has always known how to draw.

That is also what a strict upload field wants. A DMV document upload that lists JPG, JPEG, and PDF has no entry for .heic and will not grow one. The GPS tag normally disappears in the re-encode, which is luck rather than a privacy step: use Remove EXIF when a listing has to be clean, and read strip GPS.

The lasting fix is on the iPhone, not here

Converting each batch as it arrives gets old in a mixed household. The Formats toggle on the other phone is the setting that stops new photos being HEIC at all, and it is covered in iPhone JPEG.

Which route the sender uses also decides what reaches you, and that side of it is iPhone to Android. If the same photos have to open on a Windows PC as well, HEIC on Windows is the other half.