Many of the new iPads and iPhones have HEIC files for their photos. If a student is required to upload a file to Canvas this file isn't compatible with the speedgrader preview. In order for a teacher to view this, he or she must download each individual document and then open them. This is extremely cumbersome, time consuming, and takes up a lot of space. Is there any way that the HEIC files can be added to the list of files that automatically preview in speedgrader? The example I would use would be if a teacher gives her students a math problem to work out. She wants to see their work, so they must take a picture of the page, then upload that picture to Canvas. Using the new iPhones causes the picture to be in HEIC format which is not compatible for preview in speedgrader.
Official Response: March 15, 2021
Thanks to everyone for participating in this thread. Our support and engineering teams have determined that DocViewer is unable to render .heic files, as this file type is a part of the x265 library and our main rendering software does not currently support it due to it being patented and requiring licensing.
Since this is not functionality we will be able to implement, we have archived the idea. Our teams have compiled a list of solutions:
Mac users that have a .heic file can:
- Open the .heic file in Preview
- Click “File”
- Click “Export”
- Change the format to .jpeg
- Save the file
- Upload the .jpeg version of the file
iPhone users that want to change their iPhones to save as .jpeg instead:
- Go to the Settings app
- Go to the Camera settings section
- Click Formats
- Select “Most Compatible”
- New photos will be saved as .jpeg
iPhone users that want to keep using .heic but still upload the right file to Canvas:
- Use the Canvas app
- When submitting the file, select “File Upload”
- In the page for choosing a file, use the “Camera” or the “Library” option. When using those options, the iPhone will take the picture as .heic but it will pass the Canvas app a .jpeg version automatically.
iPhone users that have .heic files but not in their Photos app, and instead in their Files app:
- Go to the Files app
- Hit the action button
- Click “Save Image”
- The .heic file is now available in the Photos app
- Follow the instructions for the scenario above, where the user uploads to the Canvas mobile app.
