Updated: How To View AVIF Images

An overview of what AV1 Image File Format (AVIF) is and how to view AVIF image files on Android, GNU/Linux, macOS and Windows operating systems.

https://www.adamsdesk.com/posts/view-avif-images/

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How To View AVIF Images

An overview of what AV1 Image File Format (AVIF) is and how to view AVIF image files on Android, GNU/Linux, macOS and Windows operating systems.

Adamsdesk

@adamsdesk

Here is my Version:

Step 1: Install VLC 4 or better (DevVersion) on your device.

Step 2: Done.

@Ann_Effes I'm sorry I do not follow. The only VLC app I know of is a video media player not an image viewer. Maybe there is another app called VLC I'm not aware of.

@adamsdesk

No, I am talking about the VLC you know, which also is an audio player and image viewer ( which many people do not know). Give it a try.

@Ann_Effes Really, well version 3 doesn't allow images. I'll take a look at version 4 dev then. This is the first time I've heard of it capable of this feature.

@adamsdesk

Are you certain?
I am running V3.0.18 (so not even the latest) and it displays .JPG and .PNG files and many others (even WebP). But not all. Interestingly it does support BPG but not HEIC and - till V4 - not AVIF.

https://wiki.videolan.org/Image

And since the Image demuxer is doing that, this should work on all platforms VLC is running on.
So if it does not work on you machine your VLC installation may be corrupted or the like.

@adamsdesk

One oddity, however is, that VLC does support .GIF, but does not play the GIF animation, but instead shows the first frame only

@Ann_Effes Yeah, the GIFs I tested don't play the animation. It seems to treat images as video media.

@adamsdesk

"This is the first time I've heard of it capable of this feature."

Yeah I know, a bit of an obscure Feature. I learned that by accidend some years ago. AFAIK it was partly supported since V2 and officially since 2018 / V3.0

@Ann_Effes Well thank you for pointing this feature out. While testing I opened jpg, webp and gif without issues. The only issue I see thus far is it treats it as an item to play rather than to view. So a list of media to play like a slideshow. As a result it doesn't display metadata, resolution, basic image manipulation, etc. Though current media info can help.

@adamsdesk

True. VLC is for images just a rough and quick way to view a pic - not much more.

On macOS my tool to do more is btw. GraficConverter

https://www.lemkesoft.de/produkte/graphicconverter/

In case you do not know it:

This app reads/converts/writes virtually EVERY image format which is out there, is also a basic image processing tool, knows all the details (resolution/color-room, full EXIF with EXIF tool, sizes etc.etc.) can do resizing, recompression, cropping, dia-shows, batch manipulation....

GraphicConverter

@Ann_Effes Yeah that is the best way to put.

Actually I have not heard of this one. Sounds like it is quite a powerful application. I may try this out if I get one of these old iMacs working.