How to open .TIF files (TIFF images) on Android, Windows and Linux

TIFF files usually arrive from somewhere professional: a scanner, a photo lab, a print shop, an archive, a fax service or a colleague in design. They’re often large, sometimes huge, and phones in particular tend to have nothing that opens them.

Folders opens .tif and .tiff files in its image viewer on Android, Windows and Linux, free and offline. It decodes TIFF itself, so it doesn’t depend on what your phone or computer happens to support.

What is a .TIF file?

TIFF, the Tagged Image File Format, was created by Aldus in the mid-1980s for desktop publishing and scanners, and passed to Adobe when Adobe bought Aldus. “Tagged” is the key word: a TIFF is a flexible container in which labelled fields (tags) describe the image, so one format can hold very different things:

• No compression, or lossless compression (LZW, ZIP, PackBits), which is why TIFF is trusted for archives and master copies.
• JPEG compression, for smaller files.
• Fax-style compression (CCITT Group 4) for black-and-white document scans.
• 16 bits per channel, CMYK colour for printing, and extra channels.
• Several pages in one file, used by fax machines and document scanners.
• Map coordinates in GeoTIFF, a variant used for maps and satellite images.

Extension	What it is
.tif	The short ending, common from scanners and on Windows
.tiff	Exactly the same format with the full ending

How to open a .TIF file with Folders

Android

1. Install Folders from the download page and allow file access.
2. Find the TIFF. Email attachments usually land in Download; type *.tif (or *.tiff) in the search box to list them all.
3. Tap it. A big TIFF can take a moment to decode. From an email app, choose Open with → Folders.

Windows and Linux

1. Browse to the file in Folders and double-click it. The arrow keys move through a folder of scans.
2. On Windows, right-click a .tif or .tiff in File Explorer and choose Open with → Folders; the installer adds it there.

What you can do with a TIFF in Folders

• View and zoom into fine detail, and swipe through a folder of scans.
• Details shows the file’s information, and when the TIFF came from a camera, what it recorded: make, model, date taken, exposure, aperture and ISO.
• Copy all text on Windows and Linux copies the text Folders recognises on a scanned page: a letter, an invoice, a form. That’s often the quickest way to get words out of a scan.
• Convert to ▸ on Windows and Linux makes JPEG or PNG copies small enough to email or upload, or WebP, AVIF, HEIC, BMP, GIF, ICO and TGA copies. Select a whole folder of scans to convert them in one go; the TIFF originals stay untouched.
• Make a TIFF. When a printer or an archive asks for TIFF, select your pictures and choose Convert to ▸ TIFF.
• Resize…, Share and Open with another app.

Other ways to open .TIF files

• Windows: the Photos app opens most TIFFs. Linux: the desktop’s image viewer.
• GIMP (free) opens TIFFs, including the pages of a multi-page file.
• XnView MP (Windows and Linux) and IrfanView (Windows) step through multi-page TIFFs page by page.
• QGIS (free) for GeoTIFF maps and satellite images.

Problems opening a .TIF file?

Only one page shows. A multi-page TIFF, such as a scanned document or a fax, holds several pictures, and many viewers show only the first. Use XnView MP, IrfanView or GIMP to see every page, or ask the sender for a PDF.

It’s black, white or very dark. Scientific, medical and GeoTIFF files often store 16- or 32-bit measurements rather than ordinary colours, so a normal viewer has no sensible way to show them. Use the software the data was made for, such as QGIS for maps or ImageJ for microscopy.

It won’t open, or the colours look wrong. TIFF allows many compression schemes, colour modes (CMYK for print, for example) and private tags, and no program supports them all. If one won’t open in Folders, try GIMP or XnView MP and save a PNG copy there.

The file is huge. Uncompressed and 16-bit TIFFs grow fast. A PNG keeps every pixel at a fraction of the size; a JPEG is smaller still.

Questions people ask

Can I open a .TIF file on Android? Yes. Folders decodes TIFF itself, so it opens on any phone with Android 7.0 or newer, offline.

How do I convert TIFF to JPG? On Windows or Linux, select the files in Folders and choose Convert to ▸ JPEG. Keep the TIFFs if they’re your master copies.

How do I turn a TIFF into a PDF? Folders doesn’t make PDFs from pictures. On Windows, open the TIFF in Photos and print it to Microsoft Print to PDF; on Linux, tiff2pdf from the libtiff tools does it in one command.

TIF vs TIFF: what’s the difference? None. It’s the same format with a shorter or longer ending.

Scans that come as PDFs? See the PDF guide. For a lighter lossless format, read the PNG guide, or browse all 382 file types Folders opens.