HEIC file format support

[kulak]

Is there anything I can do on the machine to get HEIC displayed on the website?

12/29/2025, 5:19:28 PM[ERROR] ErrorDTO {
  code: 32,
  message: 'Error during generating thumbnail: /mnt/data1/shares/photos/dance/2025/2025-02-14 KAR/IMG_7332.HEIC',
  details: 'Error: heif: Error while loading plugin: Support for this compression format has not been built in (11.6003)',
  request: { method: '', url: '' }
}

I have installed dnf install vips, because original error message made thi think that libvips was missing.
I see that I have these files now:

/usr/lib64/libvips.so.42
/usr/lib64/vips-modules-8.17/vips-heif.so

but it did not do anything with HEIC files.

[rhatguy]

What deployment method and version are you running. I can confirm HEIC works in the docker "latest-alpine" tag.

[bpatrik]

you will need to custom build vips and sharp to make it work. Also I (the repo owner) do not provide support for the "non-offitical" docker way of using the app.

[kulak]

well, I seems to have gotten most of HEIC support:

• I can view HEIC files when I click on them
• I don't see HEIC file thumbnails when I look at the listing page (it appears empty).

I am willing to share necessary log data to understand what's missing to get full HEIC files support.

[kulak]

I shared my configuration on Fedora 43 server via Ansible Role. It pretty much documents every step in a reproducable manner for custom installation:

https://github.com/kulak/pigallery2/tree/master/ansible/roles/pigallery2

[rhatguy]

I'm pretty confident this is a config / environmental issue as HEIC works in the docker build. Docker is also the recommended way to install PiGallery2 as referenced on the GitHub homepage. Are you able to try the recommended install method?

[kulak]

hmm, I am able to get container installed.

But I was under impression, that default container does not have HEIC support built-in. It sounds that I am wrong.

[rhatguy]

The latest-alpine docker tag definitely supports HEIC (both for previews as well as viewing the full size image) out of the box. There was a lot of back and forth to get those working, as a number of the dependancies for PG2 don't support it without some work. See #965 for example of where HEIC was fixed for recent iPhone versions.

[kulak]

Well, I have good news.

I found the issue, which was the artifact of having no HEIC support originally. That caused thumbnail files for HEIC to get generated with zero length. I believe these zero length files prevented thumbnail regeneration after HEIC support was installed on the system.

Zero length files explains UI behavior. I had "black boxes" in place of images. Not even the stock image for missing thumbnail.

I got a bit confused on how to force thumbnail regeneration and made a few wrong attempts.

I ended up resetting DB from Web UI which cased rescan. Then I used thumbail generation job from Web UI. I also had to flush browser cache (by opening Debugger, Network, disable cache). After all these steps I got a proper HEIC directory listing.

So, Fedora Ansible role I listed above is good. It might be missing a few other prereqs, since I run it on machine with other software on it.

I certainly will keep in mind the need to install container version to get a smoother experience.