HEIF support is not working with latest libvips from arter97/libvips

[nirmit]

First of all, a fresh install of immich is a joy with this! I don't like docker and the snap version is outdated anyway. Everything is working as expected, except HEIF.

All the heic images are now showing up with the error.

Linux version:

mew@server:~immich-native$ uname -a
Linux server 6.14.0-37-generic #37~24.04.1-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu Nov 20 10:25:38 UTC 2 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Libvips version:

mew@server:~immich-native$ sudo dpkg -l | grep libvips
ii  libvips-dev        8.18.0-99arter97~ubuntu24.04.1       amd64     image processing system good for very large ones (dev)
ii  libvips-doc        8.15.1-1.1build4                     all       image processing system good for very large ones (doc)
ii  libvips-tools      8.18.0-99arter97~ubuntu24.04.1       amd64     image processing system good for very large ones (tools)
ii  libvips42:amd64    8.18.0-99arter97~ubuntu24.04.1       amd64     image processing system good for very large ones

Error message:

[Nest] 34947  - 01/06/2026, 7:35:44 PM  ERROR [Microservices:{"id":"87019d7b-650f-4be2-a1cc-a509c74e2fa9"}] Unable to run job handler (AssetGenerateThumbnails): Error: /var/lib/immich/app/upload/library/admin/2022/Feb/2022-02-05/IMG_1430.heic: bad seek to 2223358
/var/lib/immich/app/upload/library/admin/2022/Feb/2022-02-05/IMG_1431.heic: bad seek to 2119260
/var/lib/immich/app/upload/library/admin/2022/Feb/2022-02-05/IMG_1430.heic: bad seek to 2223341
/var/lib/immich/app/upload/library/admin/2022/Feb/2022-02-05/IMG_1430.heic: bad seek to 2223332
/var/lib/immich/app/upload/library/admin/2022/Feb/2022-02-05/IMG_1430.heic: bad seek to 2223328
/var/lib/immich/app/upload/library/admin/2022/Feb/2022-02-05/IMG_1431.heic: bad seek to 2119243
/var/lib/immich/app/upload/library/admin/2022/Feb/2022-02-05/IMG_1431.heic: bad seek to 2119235
/var/lib/immich/app/upload/library/admin/2022/Feb/2022-02-05/IMG_1430.heic: bad seek to 2223327
/var/lib/immich/app/upload/library/admin/2022/Feb/2022-02-05/IMG_1431.heic: bad seek to 2119231
/var/lib/immich/app/upload/library/admin/2022/Feb/2022-02-05/IMG_1431.heic: bad seek to 2119229
heif: Error while loading plugin: Support for this compression format has not been built in (11.6003)

I can confirm that I have the decoders for this installed as well:

mew@server:~immich-native$ heif-convert --list-decoders
HEIC decoders:
- libde265 = libde265 HEVC decoder, version 1.0.15
AVIF decoders:
- aom = AOMedia Project AV1 Decoder v3.8.2
JPEG decoders:
JPEG 2000 decoders:
uncompressed: yes

What am I missing here?

[horstt]

I had this same (or a similar) issue. Warning: my system might differ from yours, so my problem might differ from yours... I had CoPilot help me out a bit troubleshooting and interpreting errors.

In my case, my version of libheif / libvips wasn't correct, so the script dismissed my locally installed HEIF support and HEIC images didn't work.

So for me, the answer was to fully rebuild libheif, with support for the required codecs:

apt-get install -y cmake pkg-config libx265-dev libde265-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libaom-dev libdav1d-dev
cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/strukturag/libheif.git
cd libheif
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

Then install and build libvips:

cd /tmp
git clone https://github.com/libvips/libvips.git
cd libvips/
meson setup build
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install

Then rebuild sharp to notice my shiny new HEIF support:

cd /var/lib/immich/app
npm rebuild sharp

If all this doesn't work, I still had some issues myself, with two versions of libheif / libvips on my system. I had to give the newly installed version priority over the old, with commands like this:

echo "/usr/local/lib" | sudo tee /etc/ld.so.conf.d/local.conf
sudo ldconfig

I don't know if you really need to do this.

By the way, after I sorted HEIC support, I noticed difficulty creating thumbnails for iPhone videos. I had to reinstall ffmpeg with support for all the right codecs... Which is another story :-)