iPhone and Mac Switch to AVIF! But what is the AVIF format?

With iOS 16 and macOS 13 Ventura, Apple will add support for the AVIF image format to its iPhones and Macs. Here’s why that’s good news.

with iOS 16, iPhone will be full of innovation. We think specifically Lock screen redesign Where The advent of the digital identity card in France. That’s not all, thankfully we find out Jen SimmonsMacOS 13 Ventura also has AVIF support.

What is AVIF? New modern image format

You may not have heard of AVIF before this article. However, it is already supported by major web browsers firefox And ChromiumBut competitive systems like Windows 11 and 10 or Android 12.

This new image format is designed as a modern alternative to jpeg. It is based on AV1 codec and enables support for HDR and transparency, while promising high-quality compression at an equal weight. So it’s a competitor to the HEIC format that it wants to push Apple, but it is based on the paid H.265 codec. Like the AV1 codec, it’s free to use without AVIF Profit Rights.

By reading this, we can better understand why Apple is prudent about the support of this codec. The company isn’t going to change the glitch, HEIC will be the default format for saving photos on the iPhone. It’s just a question of whether it can decode the AVIF images sent by its correspondents.

What about AV1 support?

At this point, Apple only announces support for AVIF on its devices, not AV1. Therefore, it is necessary to be satisfied with still or animated images and not videos. The reason can be traced to the lack of hardware support for the AV1 codec in recent Apple chips, even the Apple M2 chip. So decoding an AV1 video file will be done in software, which will have a higher impact on battery, whereas decoding an occasional AVIF image will have a lower impact.

with Worrying appearance of the European Union in the form of AV1Whether Apple wants to go further in supporting the codec in its next chips remains to be determined.

We invite you to follow us Download our Android and iOS app. You can read our articles, files and watch our latest YouTube videos.