IssueTracker

Component used: ExifInterface
Version used: 1.3.3
Devices/Android versions reproduced on: all devices

ExifInterface currently supports many types for reading Exif, but only a limited number of types for writing Exif. This is a feature request for supporting writing to HEIF images. There was [a similar prior issue](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/143688100) opened as a Bug though and labeled as Won't Do, so this is intended as a Feature Request.

HEIC images are well supported on iOS, so we're looking for a common format for smaller images than JPEG since our apps requires many images uploaded from users. HEIF images have sort of been supported in Android since 9.0, but the state of HEIF overall is poor compared to say JPEG, PNG, or WebP. We use Exif for a variety of image attributes and poor platform support for it discourages us from using HEIF entirely.

There is currently no easy way to add Exif to HEIF images. HeifWriter as part of the Heifwriter androidx lib is available , but it's for some reason still in alpha release, with no updates at all in several years. As such it also is worrying whether that lib is a long-term solution at all or stable. It has a [addExifData()](https://developer.android.com/reference/androidx/heifwriter/HeifWriter#addExifData(int,%20byte[],%20int,%20int)) method, but it expects correctly formatted raw bytes, and there's no example nor even a sample test case in AOSP on how to use this properly. Exif is also highly esoteric and so it's not easy to decipher both how that lib will apply the data and how to correctly write Exif bytes at all. It also seems strange to not support HEIF writing directly in ExifInterface as well since it's been several years since Android 9.0.

Any advice on how to better accomplish writing Exif for HEIF images currently though is welcome.