Recover Deleted HEIC Photos from iPhone Exports

The moment you notice the HEIC files are gone, stop saving anything to that drive, card, or USB stick. Every new file you write risks landing on top of the photos you want back, and once a sector is overwritten it cannot be recovered.

• Don't import more photos to the same disk or card.
• Don't “repair” or reformat when the system prompts you.
• If the HEIC files were on an SD card or USB stick, eject it and set it aside until you can scan it.

RecoverHelper opens the source drive strictly read-only, so scanning can never make things worse — but the less you touch the disk before scanning, the more you get back.

RecoverHelper runs on Windows and macOS and recovers HEIC images from any drive, memory card, or USB stick connected to the computer — including the disk where you keep your iPhone exports.

1. Install RecoverHelper on a different drive than the one you're rescuing.
2. Select the drive, card, or partition that held the HEIC files.
3. Run a scan and watch live progress, throughput, and ETA.
4. Preview the found HEIC photos to confirm they're intact.
5. Recover them to a different drive than the source.

You can run the full scan for free to confirm your photos are there before deciding to unlock them.

The right mode depends on where the HEIC files lived:

• Quick Scan — reads the NTFS Master File Table. Best right after an accidental delete or emptied Recycle Bin on a healthy NTFS drive; it brings files back with their original names, folders, and timestamps.
• Deep Scan (the default) — runs Quick Scan first, then carves the whole drive by file signature to find HEIC files the file system has already forgotten.
• Carving Only — a pure signature scan for SD cards, USB sticks, and other non-NTFS (FAT32/exFAT) volumes. It recovers the image data even when the original filename is gone, though names aren't restored in this mode.

On a Mac, original filenames are rebuilt on NTFS volumes; the Mac's own APFS/HFS+ disks are recovered by signature, so the contents come back even when the names don't.

RecoverHelper is built so you can't accidentally destroy what you're rescuing:

• The source drive is opened read-only — the scan never modifies it.
• The app blocks same-drive output, so you can't overwrite the photos you're recovering. Always save them to a different drive.
• Bad-sector tolerance skips unreadable areas and keeps going, so a failing card or aging drive still surrenders most of its files.

One caveat on formatting: a quick format leaves the data recoverable, but a full format or secure erase that overwrites every sector is not.

Scanning and previewing are free, so you can confirm your HEIC photos are recoverable before spending anything.

• Free — recover JPG and PNG photos at full quality, with no signup and no bundled adware.
• App pairing (free) — scan the QR code in the free RecoverHelper mobile app once, and this PC unlocks HEIC along with camera RAW, video, and audio formats, plus partial recovery of fragmented files.

Because HEIC is the format iPhones export by default, recovering those images needs the free app pairing — and you can check the preview first to see exactly which photos come back.