If you have a problem with the photos on your computer, it may be due to a compatibility error or simply because there is a damaged image. But if it is general, you may have to install a series of things on your PC that fix these failures.
HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Container or high efficiency image container and is the updated or improved format of HEIF or High Efficiency Image Format, used in Apple brand mobile devices. On the other hand, HEVC is a codec that stands for High Efficiency Video Coding. They all have in common that they are designed to improve image and video quality, but they can pose a problem when viewing photos or videos on the PC due to lack of compatibility.
Generally these codecs are pre-installed in Windows and we will not have any problem because we will be able to play any video or view any image, but Windows 11 may be giving us problems and we must install some of these codecs through necessary extensions that we can download for free from Microsoft Store, as reported by some users.
How to install
We can install the codecs from the Microsoft Store, as we have said in the previous paragraph. In most cases they will be installed natively in Windows but we can find them from the Microsoft application store.
We simply have to open a window in the browser on our computer and go to the Microsoft store and open Windows Apps. We can use the search engine or access tools, but you can also download them using the links that we will leave you below. You just have to go to the “HEVC Video Extensions” page and click on the “Install” button, follow the codec installation steps and that’s it.
Once we have one installed, we do the same with the other. In this case, we are looking for the HEIF extension from the Microsoft Store whose developer is “Microsoft Corporation” as you will see in the screenshot below. We click on the button that takes us to the store on our PC and we simply touch “install”.
When we have completed both installations, we can try again with the image or video that is giving us a problem to see if we can get it to work correctly and we can play it without any problem. If not, it may not just be that we are missing the codec but there is another problem or simply that the codec we have is faulty.
Other possible solutions
If what happens to us is that the codec is failing and we have it installed, we can uninstall them previously and follow the previous steps to install them again and check if the problem is here. But normally the codecs do not appear in the list of add or remove programs from the PC so we will have to find them by following other ways, but it won’t be too hard…
Search for “cmd” in the Start menu of your computer. Once we have it, we open “Command Prompt” and press the right button to touch “Run as administrator” to open it.
Once inside, we must write the following:
winget uninstall Microsoft.HEVCVideoExtension_8wekyb3d8bbwe
We accept in case we are asked to accept terms using “Y” and we do the same with the HEIF codec extension to install it again, writing:
winget uninstall Microsoft.HEIFImageExtension_8wekyb3d8bbwe
Once they are uninstalled, install again to see if it works.