Need to turn off HEIF in Android 13.

[matthewatlant0s]

Hello,
I have a Samsung galaxy A51 that runs android 13, I need to turn off HEIF format, but cannot find it listed in the settings in the phone,

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

 

[svim]

HEIF being an integral multimedia codec, essentially part of the installed operating system, what you're asking for isn't something you'll find in your phone's Settings menu.

High Efficiency Image File Format - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Are you having problems with high res photos/videos during playback or creation? If the latter, try looking in Settings menu in the Camera app and set it to use lessor resolution. If the former, which media player app are you using?

 

[mikedt]

Go into Camera settings > Advanced picture options > Turn High efficiency pictures to OFF
The camera will then save pics as JPG, not HEIF.

 

[nickdalzell]

Oh great, now there's another format that's like WEBP, and can't be used anywhere..(can't post online or on forums)

 

[Hadron]

Blame the browser developers for that: the standard was finalised in 2015, so they've had plenty of time!

Android has supported HEIF since Android 8.

 

[nickdalzell]

No, you can't even upload an Webp or HEIF here on the forum. Can't set them as desktop wallpapers on Windows (yes, including 10 and 11) either, and many photo viewers go 'nope!'

Why are we creating more stupid formats no one asked for? Pick one USB type, one image type for crying out loud. I am glad these fools don't get into vehicle design or we'd have differently shaped wheels or something. Sometimes it's best to leave things alone.

 

[mikedt]

I'm sure a main reason why there's a reluctance to support newer image formats like WEBP, HEIC, HEIF, etc. is software patents, and the millions of $$$ that might have to be paid in licensing fees. Things like JPG, GIF, BMP, etc. their software patents have expired, and those formats are now free.

Everything you Need to Know About the HEIF Image Format that will Soon Replace JPEG - TechPP

Most of you should be fairly familiar with the JPEG image format. Well, it might soon be a history considering the tech giants are slowly moving to HEIF. So what exactly is HEIF? How is it better? Here is an in-depth look at the next big image format.

techpp.com

Why Not HEIF: It’s Patented

The biggest hurdle, unfortunately, in more companies following suit is the fact that the group behind HEVC, a video compression technology from which HEIF was developed, couldn’t agree on the patent’s licensing fees. This led to that group being split into three separate bodies. Therefore, anyone who wants to add support for HEIF will have to pay them all individually. For folks like Google or Apple, this is no big deal but it’s the smaller companies who will have to think twice.​

I always have my camera set as JPG, because I know that will work with very much anything.

Nope, can't upload HEIF images to AF. Now is that Firefox itself, or xenForo telling Firefox that it doesn't accept HEIF for uploads?

I remember when PNG first appeared the take-up and support for that was quite quick. because it's free and not patented.

 

[nickdalzell]

I'd wager it's Xenforo failing as I can reproduce it on MacRumors forums which also runs on Xenforo and on multiple browsers including Chrome.

The Windows Photo Viewer in Windows 10 doesn't know what to make of them either, and no thumbnails in Explorer for them either. They just look like blank files. Changing the extension to *.jpg does not fix the issue.

 

[mikedt]

So apparently HEIF is a bit of a fail then, at least until the patents expire and it becomes free.

 

[nickdalzell]

Just more solutions in search of problems...

From what I could look up, it and Webp are intended to save bandwidth. But that would had made more sense a decade ago when broadband was still limited. Late to the party, there.