.HEIC files should import/sync following installation of Cygwin64 per instructions on FAQ page and green checkmark showing up next to HEIF Support under the “About” menu.
Current Behavior
.HEIC files do not import/sync
Steps to Reproduce
Installed Cygwin per FAQ and verified that green check mark next to HEIF support appeared
Created test folder containing a sampling of file types (total folder quantity = 11) including .mp4, .mov, .png, .heic, .jpg with files ranging in size from 160kb for .jpg to 32 ,480kb for .png
Set photostructure to only scan this folder
Forced resync of folder
Only .jpg and .png files appeared (side note (FFMPEG Support also shows green check mark)
Environment
Windows 10 (10.0.19045) on x64 | PowerShell: 5.1.19041 | Electron: 13.1.9
Version 1.1’s heif support has been improved in more recent builds. If you’re somewhat comfortable with a terminal, please upgrade to the alpha (or even prealpha!) builds of PhotoStructure for Node:
Apologies that the desktop build’s version has languished! The third party libraries I depended on for v1.1 were essentially abandoned. I will be switching to a different desktop package as soon as I can, and then the desktop edition will be on par with the server editions.
Thanks to @R_G for reporting this issue. Apologies for the delayed follow-up.
The HEIF tooling situation on Windows has moved forward considerably since v1.1. The current Windows desktop build uses a modern libheif from msys2, so Cygwin is no longer in the picture and HEIC import works out of the box. Together with general HEIF handling improvements:
v2026.1: HEIF thumbnails are extracted via heif-thumbnailer when available, rendering in 10–100 ms instead of the prior 2–8 seconds.
v2026.4: Added a fallback to full heif-convert conversion when thumbnail extraction fails, instead of giving up on the file.
