Unable to open HEIC photos on Fedora 41

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Hello Fedora Community!

I’m opening this thread because I’m unable to open HEIC files using Gnome Image Viewer on Fedora 41.

I understand Fedora does not support HEIC out of the box for some licenses issues, that’s why I’ve already installed libheif-freeworld from RPMFusion repository:

$ rpm -qa | grep heif
rpm -qa | grep heif
libheif-1.17.6-2.fc41.x86_64
heif-pixbuf-loader-1.17.6-2.fc41.x86_64
libheif-tools-1.17.6-2.fc41.x86_64
libheif-freeworld-1.17.6-4.fc41.x86_64

It seems this is not enough, because I cannot open the files.

Gnome Image Viewer shows this error when opening the file:

Remote error: org.gnome.glycin.Error.LoadingError: loaders/glycin-heif/src/bin/glycin-heif.rs:27:78: InvalidInput(Unspecified) Invalid input: Unspecified: Too many auxiliary image references

Any idea on how can I fix this issue?

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Is ffmpeg-libs or libavcodec-freeworld installed?

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But I don’t think glycin actually uses those? It uses libheif via libheif-rs.

I’m not sure whether RPM Fusion actually offers extra glycin loaders. Don’t think so.

4

ffmpeg-libs is already installed, libavcodec-freeworld is missing.

Is it required for opening HEIC files?

5

Added workstation

6

Can you link an example HEIC file that is triggering this error?

I tried a couple of samples from HEIC sample file gallery | Download HEIC test file and I can’t reproduce your error.

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7

No extra glycin loaders are needed. Fedora includes libheif loader already. The only things required from RPM Fusion are libheif-freeworld and libde265. The ffmpegdec libheif decoder provided by libheif-freeworld is not required for HEIC decoding (yes, I tested that).

5 Likes
8

You only need one of those and neither is required for decoding HEIC files.

9

If these are iPhone HEICs from a more recent iOS you’ll need to wait until libheif is updated to at least 1.18.x.

10

Can confirm this is also happening to me in Fedora KDE 41. I have kf6-kimageformats and heif-pixbuf-loader installed. The HEIC files I have are from an older iOS version

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That can explain why I cannot open HEIC files: the photos were taken using iOS 18.
Thanks for the hint!

I’ll wait until libheif 1.18.x is available in Fedora repositories.

12

Thanks for the information, guys. We’ll see what we can do about updating libheif to 1.18.x in F41.

6 Likes
13

Fun fact: libheif 1.19.x has been backported to Debian stable. :wink:

P.S. Note that it’s also possible to patch 1.17.x…

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As a note: I installed a HEIC converter .exe and ran it under Wine. It worked.

15

Interesting bug. Fedora 42 here, trying to view .heic files in the system photo viewer, and it started working once I had libheif-freeworld installed. Don’t know why it failed for OP

2 Likes
16

Can confirm that now with Fedora 42 with libheif-freeworld installed it seems to be working (Dolphin thumbnails / Gwenview). :tada:

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17

I have Fedora Silverblue 42 with libheif-1.19.8-1.fc42.x86_64, and can’t view a heif photo taken with an iPhone 16. The metadata is shown, but no image

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I’m not positive, but you might also need libheif-tools from the official repos, and/or libheif-freeworld from RPMFusion.

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This was it for me. Specifically, I needed the libheif-tools package installed as I had libheif-freeworld already.