What Is an .aae File on iPhone?
An .aae file is a list of the edits you made to a photo — crop, filter, exposure — stored separately from the image itself. It is not a picture, and on its own it shows nothing.
.aae
Why it will not open
- It contains no image data. iOS keeps the original photo untouched and records your edits alongside it, so the .aae is a set of instructions, not a result.
- The instructions only mean something to Apple Photos. Windows and Android have no way to apply them, so the file is inert once it leaves the Apple ecosystem.
- It arrives without being asked for. Copying photos off an iPhone often brings the sidecar files along, which is why folders end up with IMG_1234.HEIC and IMG_1234.AAE side by side.
How to open it
Get the edited photo instead
- 1 On the iPhone, open the photo and use the share sheet to export it — sharing flattens the edits into the image.
- 2 Alternatively, in Settings > Photos, set "Transfer to Mac or PC" to "Automatic", which converts and flattens on export rather than handing over the raw pair.
- 3 The exported file is a normal JPEG or HEIC with the edits applied and no sidecar.
If you only want to read it
- 1 An .aae is XML — a property list. Opening it in a text editor shows the adjustment parameters.
- 2 It is genuinely readable, but it describes operations rather than pixels, so there is no image to recover from it.
Can you delete it?
On a computer, yes — the photo file is complete without it. On the iPhone itself, deleting it would discard the edit history and revert the photo to the original, so leave it alone there.
Why the photo looks unedited on Windows
Because the edits live in the .aae, not in the image. The HEIC or JPEG you copied is the original. Re-exporting from the phone through the share sheet is what produces an edited copy.