Take lots of screenshots? Reduce storage up to TEN times!
iOS 26 quietly added a new option for screenshots on iPhone that I recommend almost everyone turn on, especially if you take a lot of screenshots. Apple now lets you save HDR screenshots using the HEIF image format instead of the older PNG format. The big win here is storage. These screenshots usually take up significantly less space while still looking better on modern screens. Compatibility concerns are minimal because Apple automatically converts the image when needed.
How to turn on HDR screenshots
You can find this in Settings > General > Screen Capture > Format, and choose HDR.
Once this is enabled, all new screenshots will be saved using HEIF instead of PNG. The difference means little to most people, except that your screenshots will consume 50-90% less space, and if you screenshot certain images and videos, they will be more vivid!
What do these acronyms mean?
HDR (High Dynamic Range) simply means a picture with brighter highlights and richer colors. You see more detail in the extremely dark and bright parts instead of being solid black or solid white. This will only affect screenshots in apps that take advantage of HDR, such as the Photos app and Instagram. If you've ever been scrolling and suddenly see your screen get brighter and the image is significantly more vivid, that's HDR at work.
PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a very old image format that has been around since 1996. While great for its time and widely accepted, PNG files are very large. In the past 30 years, we have gotten much better at compressing images to make things more efficient.
HEIF (High Efficiency Image Format, pronounced “heyf”) is the more important part of this. HEIF is a modern image format designed to keep high quality while using much less storage than PNG, which is technology from the 90s. Typically, a PNG screenshot runs about 0.5 MB to 10 MB, depending on the complexity of the image. The same screenshots in HEIF often run 0.2 MB to 1 MB. If you take lots of screenshots, that adds up quickly. The iPhone camera app switched to HEIF with iOS 11 back in 2017. Previously, it was JPEG. This change cut the storage size of photos in half.
HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container). HEIF (the format) describes the compression method, while HEIC is the file container that you stick a HEIF image into, so image files end in “.heic”. I know that sounds confusing, so most people use the terms interchangeably, and that’s just fine.
What about compatibility?
Back in the early days of iOS 11, when Apple switched the camera app to HEIF instead of JPEG, it was a big problem for compatibility because few people could read HEIF. So I know many people who switched their camera format back to JPEG or installed third-party apps. But Apple quickly realized this was a problem. Now, if you share a HEIF image with someone or upload it to an app or website, your device will automatically convert it to a compatible format. For most people, there is no downside, only saved space.
My recommendation: turn this on and forget about it. It is one of the easiest ways in iOS 26 to save storage without changing how you use your iPhone at all. Of course, this will only affect new screenshots.
