With iOS 11, Apple introduces a brand new image format that will prevent your photos from draining your iPhone’s storage. It’s called High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF) and aims to save up to half your storage space due to photos taken with your iPhone’s camera. This will definitely help users with low storage space, especially people with 32GB iPhones. However, there is one downside to using this format and that is compatibility. So far, photos taken with your iPhone’s camera have been saved as: .jpg. When you update to iOS 11, the images will have the extension .heic.jpg. As a result, you will run into problems trying to share your photos with others in certain apps.
Ever since I updated to iOS 11 Developer Beta, I’ve personally encountered this issue when trying to share images on Discord where the image was uploaded as an unknown file. If you’re having compatibility issues like me, you may want to disable the use of this new format that Apple has brought to the latest version of iOS. So, before we look at how to disable High Efficiency Image Format in iOS 11, let’s talk about what the format actually is:
What is High Efficiency Image Format (HEIF)?
HEIF new image compression technique Used by Apple in iOS 11 to reduce the size of photos you take on your iPhone to save storage space. Let’s say you have a JPG photo with a file size of 5 MB, HEIF compression will reduce the photo to 2.6-3 MB. With this technique, image quality is not compromised in any way, and that’s probably why Apple decided to implement it in the latest iOS version.
Disable High Efficiency in iOS 11
note: I tried this on an iPhone 7 Plus and an iPhone 6 running the latest iOS 11 beta 1 for developers, so this should work for you too.
- go Settings Scroll down on your iOS device and “Camera” settings. Now, tap on “Forms”.
- When done, check “Most Compatible” Make sure to select and under the camera capture section. “Automatic” For the option just below Export to Mac or PC.
All right, that’s it. Your photos will now be saved as: .jpgjust like in iOS 10 and all previous versions.
SEE ALSO: Transfer Apps to Free Storage in iOS 11
Solve Compatibility Issues by Disabling High Efficiency in iOS 11
Apple has done a great job of letting users decide if they want to keep this new format enabled or not. If you’re running low on storage, you should probably keep High Efficiency enabled. However, if file compatibility rather than storage is your number one priority, you will find this feature very useful and you can avoid running into problems when trying to share photos online. So, are you going to disable high efficiency? Let us know what you think of this feature by leaving a few words in the comments section below.
