New Heic (iPhone 16) problems

Support and Help
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Ubuntu Version:

Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS

Desktop Environment (if applicable): Gnome 46

Problem Description:

New iPhone (16) HEIC format pics don't open in thumbnails in Nautilus, nor EOG or any other program I've tried, except for GIMP

Relevant System Information:

Screenshots or Error Messages:

What I’ve Tried:

I’ve installed heif-thumbnailer and heif-gdk-pixbuf, but pictures from the iPhone 16 (pro) do not show as thumbnails, nor do they open in Eye of Gnome, Shotwell, or any other program I’ve tried, except for GIMP. GIMP is able to open the pictures, but I just want a quick way to view and select them to print (I have more than a thousand). (I do know how to change them to JPG, but I do not want to do that, I just want to be able to view them and select them).

Strange thing is, older iPhone pictures in HEIC format (iPhone 12 e.g.) do open in EOG and as thumbnails in Nemo or Nautilus.

So I suspect something has changed maybe in the HEIC format? But it is still strange that GIMP opens them and other programs not.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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:confused: Could you please clarify this? GNOME 46, and a .2 version in July 2025, both sound more like 24.04 than 22.04?

How have you installed GIMP? (deb, snap, flatpak,…)
How have you installed the other programs you’ve tried?

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Hi, yes 24.04.2 LTS, I’ve corrected this in the original post.

I do not know how I’ve installed GIMP, I think it was already installed before I upgraded to 24.04, but it is version 3.0.4 if that helps, and I do not remember how EOG or Shotwell are installed, is there a way to check if it is snap or deb?

To install heif-thumbnailer I used the terminal: sudo apt install heif-thumbnailer.

And I did try gpicview (from the terminal: sudo apt install gpicview), but to no avail.

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If the version of Gimp is 3.04 then it was more than likely installed as a Flatpak or Snap. The .deb version in the repos is a 2.x version.

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Apparently GIMP is snap (I used the which command which gave /snap/bin/gimp) and EOG and Shotwell, Nemo and Nautilus are all in /usr/bin/

Does that make a difference?

1 Like
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There are snap versions of both EOG and Shotwell. Do either of these snaps open your HEIF pictures correctly?

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I installed both EOG and Shotwell as snap, but no, they don’t open the new HEIC files. Shotwell is able to open the video’s created with the iPhone 16, but not the HEIC pictures.

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Also heif-convert is no longer working on the new HEIC format. I’ve tried converting some pictures to jpeg, but got an error. Converting the older HEIC format with heif-convert works fine.

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The old libheif library in Ubuntu 22.04 is outdated. You need as least v1.18.0 for iOS 18 support.

Or, use Flatpak / Snap app packages that usually have the most recent run-time libraries in bundle.

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Hi ubuntuhandbook1,

Do you know how to install libheif v1.18.0 (I’m not that knowledgeable). I’ll give it a try then.

I have EOG and Shotwell as snap packages, but they do not open the latest HEIC files.

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I would recommend to use Flatpak package.

As far as I know, GIMP 3.0.4 Flatpak was built against libheif 1.19.4, Shotwell 0.32.13 Flatpak was built with latest libheif 1.20.1. But I don’t know which for EOG.

If you want to get recent libheif for default apps, there’s only 3rd party (unofficial) packages available. And here’s blog post talking about it.

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Hi Ubuntuhandbook1,

Thanks! Installing the latest version of libheif from the blog post fixed the problem. I can now see the HEIC pics in EOG and Shotwell.

Command I used were:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1/libheif

and

sudo apt install libheif1 libheif-plugin-libde265

thumbnails in Nemo do not work yet, but at least I can browse through them and select them for print.

So thanks!

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So, to get the thumbnails working as well I installed the latest version of heif-thumbnailer (heif-thumbnailer_1.19.8-1_amd64.deb) from from https://packages.debian.org/sid/amd64/heif-thumbnailer/download which was probably not a good idea.

Thumbnails are working now in Nemo, but I get a warning that I have a broken package. But if I try to remove heif-thumbnailer now (via synaptic or dpkg -r), I get a warning that ubuntu-desktop and gnome-control-center will be removed as well.

Is there a way to remove the manually installed version of heif-thumbnailer and/or revert back to the older version without removing ubuntu-desktop and gnome-control-center?

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That’s why I recommend Flatpak packages (runs in sandbox). 3rd party libheif library may run into dependency issues.

UPDATE: sorry, just found that the official libheif PPA has revived!

So it better to use the official package from developers instead, by running commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:strukturag/libheif
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -t "o=LP-PPA-strukturag-libheif" libheif1 heif-gdk-pixbuf heif-thumbnailer

The PPA has heif-thumbnailer version 1.19.8-1~ppa1~ubuntu24.04 while you manully installed version 1.19.8-1 from Debian package.

Not sure which one is higher. If the one from PPA does not override it, try adding a rule via command:
sudo nano /etc/apt/preferences.d/libheif1

Add file content below to set a higher priority (over 1000) for packages from PPA:

Package: *
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-strukturag-libheif
Pin-Priority: 1001

Then, press Ctrl+S to save, Ctrl+X to exit, and run sudo apt update to refresh cache.

Finally, re-run the apt install command should fix the broken package issue for you:

sudo apt install libheif1 heif-gdk-pixbuf heif-thumbnailer

When done, delete that rule:

sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/libheif1

And refresh via sudo apt update command.

Good Luck!

1 Like
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Hi thanks again.

I’ve followed your instructions.

I don’t really know what happened, but heif-thumbnailer stayed the same I think, also with the higher priority setting, but I upgraded the package via synaptic (don’t know if that made a difference), and now everything works and I have no broken package anymore.

In Nemo thumbnails sometimes show, sometimes not. I have the impression that they show as thumbnails after I have opened them first in EOG or Shotwell. Not sure what that means, but good enough for me :wink:

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