I’m running Fedora KDE Plasma, and I’m running into a bug where HEIF/HEIC file formats fail to load. Can you please tell me how to enable support for HEIF/HEIC file formats?
In Dolphin, the images show as a green folder without displaying the image.
They do not display in Gwenview. When I try to open them with Gwenview, I get the error:
“Loading IMG_1234.heic” failed
Gwenview cannot display documents of type image/heif.
I’ve tried opening in Shotwell, but they show as a black image with the file name (e.g. IMG_1235.heic).
I reviewed the forums, and it looks like some users have downloaded qt-heif-image-plugin to address this, but this plug-in is not found in Discover.
Can you please provide a graphical way to enable support for heic/heif formats? I’m not technical, and would prefer not to do this in the terminal.
Reference
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.5
Qt version: 6.9.1
Kernel version: 6.14.11-300.fc42.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics platform: Wayland
Gwenview version: 1:25.04.2-01.fc42 (included when installing KDE Plasma and listed in Discover as coming from Fedora Linux)
Shotwell version: 0.32.10-2.fc42 (installed in Discover from Fedora Linux)
Try installing libheif-heif, heif-thumbnailer reboot and check. I can’t say for sure since I just download one of each file and I have there preview on their icons.
I’ve installed both libheif and kimageformat, but Gwenview and Dolphin still don’t support HEIC/HEIF formats. It looks like I still need to switch the kimageformats_heif to “on”, but I’m not sure how to do that.
I’ll also look at adding libheif-freeworld from rpmfusion. I already had libheif installed, but based on your links, it looks like I may need to add libheif-freeworld.
Yep, if the HEIC/HEIF files you have contain patent-encumbered media, then you’d need versions of the codecs other than what Fedora ships in its repositories, as Fedora takes a conservative approach to what is permissible for them to distribute. The RPMFusion how-to guides are likely your best bet there.
Much easier to find the packages one wants. I’ve used Fedora, Debian, OpenSuse and all like Ubuntu you end up having to hunt down a lot of programs, whereas with Arch and Arch based distros with the exception of a small handful lesser known programs everything you could want is in the repos that come with the particular distro.
While it is true that arch linux doesn’t package split, there is a major downside to it: It’s an eternal rolling release. Packages can be removed at a whim, forcing you to use the AUR. It defeats the purpose of having everything you want when you have to pray the maintainers keep a package you like. In addition, arch linux has a smaller repository meaning that once again, you’re stuck using the AUR. In fact, “Just use the AUR bro” is considered by many to be a plus of arch linux. I don’t have time to babysit my OS especially at a sudden change I didn’t want, so I rather stick with debian or fedora.
SOLUTION
I used Firefox to download libheif-freeworld from rpmfusion
(I used the “RPM Fusion free for Fedora 42” link under the “Graphical Set-up for Firefox Browser”)
I then opened that file. It automatically appeared in Discover, where I was able to click “Install”. Once complete, I went back to the command line and ran
sudo dnf install libheif-freeworld
Everything then worked in Gwenview and Dolphin.
Note: I did not need to download the heif-thumbnailer.
