Convert HEIC to JPG online

Why your iPhone photos arrive as HEIC

Since iOS 11 in 2017, iPhones and iPads save photos in HEIF, the High Efficiency Image File format, with the .heic extension. The container is an MPEG standard; the picture inside is compressed with HEVC (H.265), the same codec iPhones use for video. The gain is real: a 12 MP photo that would take 3 to 4 MB as JPG usually fits in 1.5 to 2.5 MB as HEIC with the same visible detail.

The catch is compatibility. Windows only opens HEIC after extra codec packages are installed, many web forms and online shops reject it, older Android phones show a grey placeholder, and plenty of print services and photo editors still expect JPG.

Converting on your side solves this once, without asking every recipient to install something.

Avoiding HEIC in the first place

If you regularly need JPG, the iPhone itself has two switches worth knowing:

• Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible makes the camera save JPG from now on. Files get larger, but nothing needs converting.
• Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC → Automatic converts to JPG when you copy photos over a cable.

Neither helps with photos you already have, photos sent to you as files, or HEIC images exported from iCloud. That is where this converter is useful.

How the conversion works

Most browsers cannot read HEIC on their own, so the page loads libheif, an open-source HEIF decoder compiled to WebAssembly, when you add the first file. The same decoder is used in every browser, so results are consistent.

The decoder reads the main image from the HEIC file. iPhone photos are stored internally as a grid of small tiles, and libheif reassembles them into the full picture and applies the stored rotation, so portrait shots come out upright. The pixels are then drawn on a canvas and encoded as JPG at your chosen quality. All of this runs on your device; the photos are not uploaded.

Some parts of a HEIC file have no place in a JPG and are dropped:

• Depth maps from Portrait mode, so the blur can no longer be adjusted later. The blur already applied to the photo stays.
• The HDR gain map newer iPhones add. The JPG looks like the standard-brightness version of the photo, so on an HDR screen it may appear less bright than in the Photos app.
• EXIF metadata: date taken, camera model, lens, exposure and GPS location.

That last point cuts both ways. Removing location data is a plus when you post photos publicly. If you need the capture dates for sorting an archive, note them first with the EXIF viewer, or keep the original HEIC files alongside the JPGs.

Picking the quality for your purpose

The slider goes from 10% to 100% and starts at 85%. What changes is how many bytes the JPG encoder may spend; the pixel dimensions stay identical, so a 4032×3024 HEIC becomes a 4032×3024 JPG.

• Sharing and online forms: 75–85%. A typical iPhone photo lands around 1.5 to 3 MB at 85%, less at 75%.
• Printing: 90%. The extra bytes keep fine texture in skin, foliage and fabric that shows up on paper.
• Further editing: 95–100%. Every later save as JPG loses a little more, so start from the highest quality you can.

Keep in mind that the JPG is usually larger than the HEIC even at 85%, because HEVC is the more efficient codec. If a site caps uploads at 1 or 2 MB, reducing the resolution works better than dropping quality very low: resizing a 12 MP photo to 2048 px on the long side typically brings it well under 1 MB while staying sharp on any phone or laptop screen.

Large batches and troubleshooting

You can drop a whole folder's worth of photos at once. They are decoded one after another, and the list shows the original and converted size of each file. When the batch is done, download files individually or as one ZIP. Each file can be up to 50 MB, which covers even 48 MP images from recent Pro models.

If something goes wrong:

• The file is rejected or fails to decode. Check that it really is HEIC; some apps add a .heic extension to JPGs or videos. A file that opens in the Photos app but not here may be damaged during transfer; copy it again.
• Conversion is slow on a phone. HEVC decoding is demanding; a hundred 12 MP photos are quick on a laptop but take a while on an older phone.
• Live Photos. The HEIC holds only the still image; the short video lives in a separate .mov file and is not part of the conversion.