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I know that macOS has a crippled support of HEIF files, because it can't open those with a bit depth > 8 bits:

Why can't Preview Export 16-bit HEIC images?

Actually I have 16 bits HEIF files that macOS does not properly handle: blank previews in the Finder and not rendered by Preview (they are rendered as a blue blob). Files are fine since I can open them with Gimp.

Now I've tried to embed JPEG EXIF thumbnails within them (thumbnails are properly created because I can re-extract them with exiftool) expecting at least the Finder to use them, but nothing changed. Is it possible to force it in some way? I suppose this has to do with Spotlight, but I really don't know it enough.

As a reference, this is the command I used to convert HEIF files from TIFF:

convert "file.tiff[0]" -quality 90 "file.heif"

And this is the command used to embed thumbnails:

convert -thumbnail 2000x2000 -quality 70 -profile srgb file.heif jpeg:- | exiftool "-ThumbnailImage<=-" file.heif

convert is from ImageMagick of course.

I'm running macOS Monterey 12.6.7.

Thanks.

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    If I am not mistaken, those previews aren't pulled from the meta data. Instead, they are generated by QuickLook. From the way I understand it works is that as long as there's an extension, Finder and Spotlight will generate the Thumbnail. If not, it gets a generic icon.
    – Allan
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 13:04
  • It is a thing I wasn't really looking into. Thanks, now I know where to investigate further. developer.apple.com/documentation/quicklookthumbnailing/…
    – Fabrizio Giudici
    Commented Aug 4, 2023 at 13:37

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