What is a HEIC file and why does my iPhone use it?

HEIC is the High Efficiency Image Container, the default camera format on Apple devices since iOS 11. It stores a photo at roughly half the size of an equivalent JPEG, which saves a great deal of storage across a full camera roll. The trade-off is that far fewer programs can open it.

Is the conversion done on my device?

Yes, entirely. A WebAssembly decoder unpacks the HEIC container in your browser and re-encodes the pixels as JPEG locally. Your photos are never uploaded, which matters because a camera roll is one of the more personal things a person owns.

Will I lose image quality converting to JPG?

Almost none that you could see. The encoder writes JPEG at 92% quality, which keeps detail and colour effectively indistinguishable from the original at normal viewing sizes. It is technically a lossy re-encode, so keep your HEIC originals if you plan to edit heavily later.

Can I convert several photos at once?

Yes. Drop in as many HEIC files as you like and they are processed as a batch, then download them individually or take the whole set as one ZIP archive. That avoids the run of separate downloads that trips browser pop-up blocking.

How do I make my iPhone shoot JPG instead?

Open Settings, choose Camera, tap Formats, and switch from High Efficiency to Most Compatible. New photos then save as JPEG automatically. Existing HEIC files in your library are unaffected, so convert those here.

Why will Windows or an upload form not open my HEIC photos?

HEIC support is patchy outside Apple’s ecosystem. Many Windows installations need a codec extension from the Microsoft Store, some older Android builds cannot display it, and a great many web upload forms accept only JPG or PNG and reject the file outright.

What happens to the photo’s metadata?

Treat metadata as unreliable through any format conversion, and check the result if it matters to you. If your concern is the opposite one, that a photo carries GPS coordinates you would rather not share, run the converted JPG through our EXIF remover afterwards.

Is it free, and is there a limit?

Free, with no account, no watermark, and no daily quota. The only practical ceiling is your own device memory, since a large batch of high-resolution photos all has to be held and decoded in the browser at once.

HEIC to JPG Converter

Convert HEIC to JPG online free — turn iPhone photos into universally compatible JPGs in your browser. Batch support, no upload, no sign-up.

Files never leave your deviceInstant — no upload waitFree, no sign-up

1Choose or drop iPhone HEIC photos

Choose HEIC/HEIF images to convert or drag & dropBatch convert iPhone HEIC photos · 100% Client-side · Free ZIP download

or import from

2Choose target format & quality

Convert to

Quality Factor: 90%

Detection is done from the file's own bytes, not its name — so a JPG or PNG that was renamed to .heic still converts instead of erroring out.

HEIC to JPG converts iPhone photos into the format everything else can open. Drop in one file or a whole batch, and each image is decoded and re-encoded as JPEG inside your browser, then downloaded individually or as a ZIP. No upload, no account, no watermark.

Why iPhone photos will not open anywhere

Apple made HEIC the default camera format in iOS 11 because it is genuinely better at its job: roughly half the file size of a JPEG at comparable quality, which across thousands of photos is a lot of storage saved. The problem is everything outside Apple's ecosystem. A Windows PC often needs a codec extension before Photo Viewer will display one. Plenty of web upload forms accept only JPG or PNG and reject the file with an unhelpful error. Older Android phones, print kiosks, some editors, and a surprising number of internal business systems all fall over. JPEG is the opposite: nearly forty years old, understood by everything, and never the reason an upload fails.

HEIC and JPG compared

The trade is compatibility against file size.
	HEIC	JPG
File size	Roughly half	Larger
Opens on Windows	Usually needs a codec	Always
Opens on Android	Newer versions only	Always
Accepted by upload forms	Often rejected	Almost always accepted
Editing software support	Partial	Universal
Transparency	Supported	Not supported
Best used for	Storage on Apple devices	Sharing, uploading, printing

How the conversion works

A HEIC file is a container, and reading it means decoding the image data inside. This tool runs aWebAssembly decoder in your browser to unpack that container, then re-encodes the pixels as JPEG at 92% quality — high enough that the difference is not visible at normal viewing sizes, while keeping files a sensible size. Because it all happens on your own hardware, there is no upload wait, no queue, and no server-side copy of your photos. A batch is limited only by your device memory rather than by someone else's free tier.

Stop it happening again

Open Settings on your iPhone or iPad.
Scroll to Camera.
Tap Formats.
Switch from High Efficiency to Most Compatible.

New photos will save as JPEG from then on. Two caveats worth knowing: this only affects future shots, so the HEIC files already in your library still need converting, and Most Compatible produces larger files, so your camera roll will consume noticeably more storage. Many people leave High Efficiency on and convert only the photos they actually need to send.

When to keep the HEIC original

Converting is not always the right move. HEIC preserves more of what the camera captured, so if you intend to edit a photo seriously — recovering shadow detail, correcting a difficult white balance — work from the original and export a JPEG at the end. Every JPEG re-encode is lossy, and repeatedly opening and re-saving the same JPEG does visibly degrade it over time. The sensible pattern is to keep HEIC as your archive and treat converted JPEGs as disposable copies made for a specific purpose.

Live Photos, bursts, and other iPhone oddities

A few things in an Apple camera roll are not simply single images, and it helps to know what to expect. ALive Photo is a still paired with a short video clip; converting gives you the still frame, which is almost always what you wanted, but the motion is not carried into a JPEG because the format has nowhere to put it. A burst is a stack of separate shots, so select the one you want in Photos before exporting rather than converting the whole sequence. Portrait mode photos keep their blurred background as baked-in pixels, but the depth information that lets you re-edit that blur does not survive. And if you are sharing photos off an iPhone at all, be aware that AirDrop and Files exports preserve HEIC while some share sheets silently convert to JPEG for you.

What to do with the converted files

If the JPEGs are destined for a website or an email, run them through theimage compressor first, since a full-resolution phone photo is far larger than any page needs. Before posting publicly, the EXIF remover strips the GPS coordinates and device details that travel inside image files. To hit exact dimensions for a form, use theimage resizer, and to build a document from several photos,JPG to PDF assembles them.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a HEIC file and why does my iPhone use it?
HEIC is the High Efficiency Image Container, the default camera format on Apple devices since iOS 11. It stores a photo at roughly half the size of an equivalent JPEG, which saves a great deal of storage across a full camera roll. The trade-off is that far fewer programs can open it.
Is the conversion done on my device?
Yes, entirely. A WebAssembly decoder unpacks the HEIC container in your browser and re-encodes the pixels as JPEG locally. Your photos are never uploaded, which matters because a camera roll is one of the more personal things a person owns.
Will I lose image quality converting to JPG?
Almost none that you could see. The encoder writes JPEG at 92% quality, which keeps detail and colour effectively indistinguishable from the original at normal viewing sizes. It is technically a lossy re-encode, so keep your HEIC originals if you plan to edit heavily later.
Can I convert several photos at once?
Yes. Drop in as many HEIC files as you like and they are processed as a batch, then download them individually or take the whole set as one ZIP archive. That avoids the run of separate downloads that trips browser pop-up blocking.
How do I make my iPhone shoot JPG instead?
Open Settings, choose Camera, tap Formats, and switch from High Efficiency to Most Compatible. New photos then save as JPEG automatically. Existing HEIC files in your library are unaffected, so convert those here.
Why will Windows or an upload form not open my HEIC photos?
HEIC support is patchy outside Apple’s ecosystem. Many Windows installations need a codec extension from the Microsoft Store, some older Android builds cannot display it, and a great many web upload forms accept only JPG or PNG and reject the file outright.
What happens to the photo’s metadata?
Treat metadata as unreliable through any format conversion, and check the result if it matters to you. If your concern is the opposite one, that a photo carries GPS coordinates you would rather not share, run the converted JPG through our EXIF remover afterwards.
Is it free, and is there a limit?
Free, with no account, no watermark, and no daily quota. The only practical ceiling is your own device memory, since a large batch of high-resolution photos all has to be held and decoded in the browser at once.