Convert HEIC to JPG
Turn iPhone and iPad photos into JPG files that open everywhere. Drop a whole batch in, get full-resolution JPGs back. Nothing is uploaded, there is no sign-up, and there is no file-size limit — the conversion happens on your own device.
Why your iPhone photo will not open
From iOS 11 onwards, an iPhone camera saves photos as HEIC by default. You can view them on the phone, and then you email one to a Windows laptop, drop one into an upload form, or open one in a browser tab, and you get “unsupported file type”. The file is not corrupt and nothing is wrong with your phone. The format simply is not one that most browsers can read.
The reason sits in the name. A HEIC file uses HEVC compression — the same codec family as H.265 video — and browsers do not ship a HEVC image decoder. Safari usually can open HEIC because it hands the work to the operating system. Chrome, Edge and Firefox on Windows generally cannot, and installing the HEIF extensions from the Microsoft Store does not change that: it makes the Windows Photos app work, not the browser.
So the same photo opening on an iPhone and failing in a Chrome tab is expected behaviour, not a fault. Converting to JPEG once removes the problem permanently, because JPEG is the one format every operating system, upload form and messaging app accepts.
What HEIC is, and why Apple uses it
HEIC is short for High Efficiency Image Container: a container (HEIF) holding images compressed with a codec (HEVC). Apple switched to it because at the same visual quality a HEIC is roughly half the size of a JPEG. On a 12-megapixel photo that difference is measured in megabytes, which matters when a phone holds thousands of them.
The trade-off is compatibility. HEIC is designed for storing photos on a device, not for sending them across the internet. JPEG is the opposite: less efficient, but universally readable. That is the whole reason a conversion step exists at all.
| HEIC | JPEG | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical file size | About half of JPEG at the same look | The baseline |
| Opens in Chrome, Edge, Firefox | No | Yes |
| Opens in Windows Explorer and Photos | Only with extra codecs installed | Yes |
| Accepted by upload forms and email | Rarely | Always |
| Lossy or lossless | Lossy | Lossy |
| Transparency | Not used in practice | Not supported |
JPG or PNG?
Choose JPEG for essentially everything. It is what you want for sharing, printing, uploading to a marketplace or sending to someone. At the default 92% quality the difference from the original is not visible at normal viewing sizes, and the file stays a sensible size.
Choose PNG only when you are going to keep editing the image and want to avoid a second round of compression, or when something specifically demands a lossless file. PNG output from a 12-megapixel photo will be several times larger than the JPEG, and it will not bring back any detail — the compression damage from the original HEIC is already in the pixels.
How the conversion works here, honestly
Your browser is asked to open the file first. If it can — which it usually can in Safari — nothing else is downloaded and the conversion is instant.
If the browser cannot read HEIC, the page fetches a decoder: a single file of about 1.3 MB which is cached by the browser afterwards. It is downloaded only when it is actually needed, and it runs entirely on your machine. It is not a server call and your photo is not part of the request. If you would rather not download anything at all, Safari on macOS or iOS will convert the same file with no such step.
Common mistakes
- Screenshotting the photo instead of exporting it. A screenshot is a re-photograph of a scaled-down preview. You lose most of the resolution and the colour is whatever the screen produced. Convert the original file.
- Converting an already-converted JPG. Every JPEG pass costs a little quality. Always start from the HEIC original, not from a file you converted earlier.
- Deleting the HEIC after converting. The HEIC is your original and the JPG is a copy. Keep both until you are sure the JPG is the one you need.
- Assuming the JPG will look identical. It will be very close, but recent iPhones can store extra highlight information that a standard JPEG has no way to record, so a bright sky may look slightly flatter. If that matters, keep the original.
- Sending the HEIC anyway because the form did not complain. Some upload forms accept the file, store it, and then show nothing when someone tries to open it later. A silent failure, discovered late, is worse than an error message.
You do not have to do this every time
There is a setting on the phone that makes the camera save JPEGs directly, which removes the need for a converter altogether:
- Open Settings on the iPhone or iPad
- Go to Camera, then Formats
- Choose Most Compatible instead of High Efficiency
The cost is storage: those photos are roughly twice the size, so a phone that is already full will feel it. If you are seeing .JPG files on your phone rather than .HEIC, this setting is already on, which is why your photos open everywhere without help.
The setting only affects new photos. Everything you have already taken stays HEIC, and that is what this tool is for. There is a longer walkthrough of the per-system options in the guide to converting HEIC photos.
Questions
Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is read from your disk by the browser, decoded, drawn to an off-screen canvas and encoded again — all inside this tab. If you disconnect your network after the page has loaded, the conversion still works. That is the test, and it is worth running once if you are converting something personal.
Why does the same photo open in Safari but not in Chrome?
Safari asks the operating system to decode HEIC, and macOS and iOS both have a HEVC decoder built in. Chrome and Edge do not use a system image decoder for this, so on Windows they have nothing to fall back on. It is a browser difference, not a difference between the files.
Does converting lose quality?
Slightly. The HEIC is decoded with no loss, then written out as a JPEG, which is a lossy format. At the default 92% quality the loss is not visible at normal viewing sizes. If you raise the slider to 100% you get a larger file rather than a better-looking one, because the encoder cannot recover detail that was never there.
Is the capture date or location kept in the output?
No. The output is written from decoded pixels, so the EXIF block — capture time, camera model, GPS coordinates — is not carried into the JPG. That is usually what you want for anything you are about to publish, but it does mean you lose the location stamp. Keep the original HEIC if you need it.
How many files can I convert at once?
There is no fixed limit; the constraint is your device's memory. Photos are processed one at a time rather than all at once for that reason. A batch of a few dozen is comfortable on a normal laptop. You can download them individually or use the zip button to get them in one file.
Why is my JPG bigger than the HEIC was?
Because JPEG is a less efficient format. The same picture needs more bytes to look the same. Expect the JPG to be roughly one and a half to two times the size of the HEIC. Lowering the quality slider is the lever if that matters; it will reduce the size without changing the pixel dimensions.
Do Live Photos work?
You get the still frame. A Live Photo is a pair of files — a HEIC image and a short MOV clip — and only the image is converted here. The motion part is not touched and not carried over.
What about HEIC files that contain more than one image?
Some HEIC files hold several images, for instance a burst or a depth pair. This tool converts the primary image and ignores the rest, which is almost always the frame you wanted. If a file contains nothing readable, it is listed with an error rather than silently skipped.