HEIC support?

[franciscofranco]

Probably more a question than an actual "issue" but is HEIC support planned to be merged on this repo? Google Photos already supports HEIC so one does wonder.

Thanks for all your work into this lib.

[TWiStErRob]

It's a question that can turn into a feature. @sjudd is this a "help wanted" one? I guess an integration library wouldn't hurt. And finally there would be an example of how to build a custom image format lib.

[sjudd]

I'm limited in what I can say but:

1. Google Photos' Android app does not support local viewing of HEIC.
2. I do not plan to add support to Glide myself.

An integration library is an interesting idea. We'd need to be careful to make sure there are no licensing issues with either the format or any library that's used to do the actual decoding. I'd definitely be willing to take a look if someone wants to put up a pull request.

[franciscofranco]

Local viewing as in reading from the local storage? I haven't tested that I think. An HEIC file uploaded from my iPhone 8 to Google Photos, and then opening it from my Pixel 2016 it decodes and shows the picture. The details show it as being an HEIC file, so I can only guess that decoding being done server side or something? I understand if you can't answer due to conflict of interest with Google.

Thanks for the prompt answers though.

[sjudd]

Yeah if you view a local only heic (one that hasn't been backed up or uploaded) on Android I'd expect it won't work. In fact I'd expect it won't even be recognized as an image or show up in the app.

[jamesjss]

Hello @franciscofranco, with your Pixel 2016, if you try to share a photo in HEIC format, for example to Whatsapp, can people see the photo or send a heic file?

[gajicm93]

Ok since we have a very important new development on this matter with Android P now introducing HEIC as part of platform/support libraries, does Glide change it's stance on support integration?

I do believe that HEIC would eventually replace both JPEG and WebP as the next image web standard, since it provides best compression ratio, and has such a strong support from iOS.

[TWiStErRob]

@gajicm93 there could be built-in integration (i.e. pass-through to BitmapFactory) I guess, but it wouldn't work pre P.

[gajicm93]

@TWiStErRob so they're not planning to include decoder into support library or something? I see they have HeifWriter in support lib for encoding?