Problem

iOS devices save photos in HEIC/HEIF format by default since iOS 11 (2017). The Anthropic Vision API currently only accepts jpeg, png, gif, and webp. This forces client-side workarounds.

Current workaround

Using heic2any to convert to JPEG in the browser before sending. This adds ~1.3MB to the JS bundle.

Proposed solution

Accept image/heic and image/heif as valid media_type values in the messages API. The server can transcode to JPEG internally.

Why this matters

• HEIC is ~50% smaller than JPEG at equivalent quality (faster upload, lower bandwidth)
• It's the default on every iPhone and iPad since 2017
• Without native support, mobile-first web apps must ship a large transcoding library

Thanks!