HEIC thumbnails in Windows Explorer

SageThumbs 2K draws iPhone photos (.heic) and other HEIF images in File Explorer. It uses Microsoft's HEIF and HEVC extensions when they are installed, and its bundled decoder when they are not.

A classic portrait painting decoded from an Apple HEIC file, shown as a thumbnail

What you see

Photos are colour-managed: the Display P3 colour iPhones record is converted to sRGB, so pictures do not look over-saturated next to your other photos.
HDR photos that carry a PQ or HLG signal are tone-mapped instead of looking washed out.
Image info shows every EXIF tag and whether the photo carries an HDR gain map.

Limits

In OneDrive and other synced folders, files stored on the PC get thumbnails as anywhere else. Online-only files are left to the cloud app, since nothing is downloaded just to draw a thumbnail.

More you can do

Right-click to convert HEIC to JPG, PNG, WebP or AVIF. A new file is written next to the original, which is never overwritten.
Strip metadata removes EXIF and GPS from a HEIC without moving a single byte of the picture, and refuses any file layout it does not fully recognise.

Extensions this covers

.heic .heif .hif .heics .heifs

See every format SageThumbs 2K supports or browse all format guides.

Get SageThumbs 2K

Install it with winget:

winget install LunarWerxs.SageThumbs2K

Or download the installer from GitHub and run it.

Download the installer

Windows 11 and 10, 64-bit, on x64 and Arm. The same page has a portable zip that needs no installing.

Free for personal use

Home, hobby and other non-commercial use is free: every format and every tool. A company, a shop or anyone doing paid work needs a business licence for each PC.

A business licence is US$49 per PC once, with 12 months of updates, or US$2.99 per PC a month. See business licence pricing

Thumbnails not showing?

Windows caches thumbnails, and a file it failed on once stays failed. In SageThumbs, Settings ▸ Advanced ▸ Rebuild thumbnail cache clears the cache and restarts Explorer.
Make sure File Explorer's "Always show icons, never thumbnails" option is off, and that the format is ticked in SageThumbs Settings ▸ File types.
Run st2k doctor in a terminal. It only reads, checks the whole chain, and prints a fix under anything that is wrong.