HEIC to JPG converter

How to convert HEIC to JPG

1. Add your photos. Drag HEIC files onto the box above, or tap Choose files. You can add several at once, and more later.
2. Pick the quality. 90% suits almost everything. Go higher if you will edit the photos, lower for smaller files to email.
3. Download. Save each JPG with the button next to it, or tap Download all for a zip of every converted photo.

Files that are not HEIC, such as a JPEG or a PNG dropped by mistake, are listed with a short reason and skipped. The rest of the batch carries on.

What is a HEIC file?

HEIC is the format iPhones use for photos. The name stands for High Efficiency Image Container: it is a HEIF image whose picture is compressed with HEVC, the same codec iPhones use for video. A HEIC photo looks the same as a JPEG but takes noticeably less space, and it can hold things JPEG cannot, such as depth data for Portrait mode and the extra information behind HDR photos.

The catch is compatibility. Apple devices open HEIC everywhere, but plenty of websites, older Windows PCs, printing services and online forms still expect JPG. That is when you need a HEIC to JPG converter.

Why your iPhone saves photos as HEIC

Space. iPhones have saved photos as HEIC by default since iOS 11 in 2017. Apple lists about 3 MB for a 24 MP photo in HEIF and 4.8 MB for the same photo in JPEG, so the same storage holds roughly one and a half times as many photos. On a phone with tens of thousands of pictures, that is many gigabytes. Our guide on how many photos a 128GB iPhone holds has the numbers for each format.

HEIC is also required for some camera features. On the Formats screen, Apple notes that Cinematic video, 4K at 60 fps or higher, and HDR video need High Efficiency.

How to make your iPhone take JPG photos instead

If you need JPG files all the time, you can change the format the Camera saves new photos in:

1. Open Settings and tap Camera.
2. Tap Formats.
3. Choose Most Compatible. New photos are saved as JPEG and new videos as H.264.

This only affects photos you take from now on; the ones already in your library stay HEIC. It also makes every new photo bigger, which adds up fast. Most people are better off keeping High Efficiency and converting only the photos they need to share, as the guide to freeing up iPhone storage recommends.

If the problem is copying photos to a computer, check one more setting: Settings › Apps › Photos › Transfer to Mac or PC. With Automatic, the iPhone converts photos to a compatible format such as JPEG when you import them over a cable. Keep Originals always copies the HEIC files as they are.

Other ways to convert HEIC to JPG

Your photos stay on your device

Most online converters upload your photos to their server, convert them there and send the JPG back. This one does not. When you add a photo, your browser downloads a HEIC decoder (the open-source libheif, compiled to WebAssembly) and does all the work itself. The photos are read from your disk, converted in memory and saved back to your downloads folder. No server ever receives them, and nothing is kept once you close the page.

It is the same promise we make in our iPhone app, PrunePic: it reviews your photos on the iPhone itself and never uploads them.

What the JPG keeps, and what it leaves out

• Kept: the full picture at its original resolution, the right way up.
• Left out: the date taken, location and camera details. Remove them anyway before sharing? Then this is a bonus. Importing into a photo library? The JPGs will be dated by when you converted them.
• Live Photos: the HEIC holds the still photo only. The short video lives in a separate .MOV file, which this tool does not convert.
• HDR: JPG is a standard dynamic range format, so HDR photos look like they do on a non-HDR screen.

Need PNG or PDF instead?

The HEIC to PNG converter keeps every pixel exactly, and theHEIC to PDF converter puts several photos in one document. Both use the same decoder as this page; the image converter takes any format.

Converting a whole camera roll?

If you are exporting years of photos to a PC or a new service, convert the ones worth keeping, not the 40 near-identical shots of the same sunset or the screenshots you took once and forgot. Clearing those first makes the export smaller and faster, and frees space on the iPhone too. PrunePic was made for that: it shows your photos one at a time, and you swipe left to delete or up to keep, with everything waiting in a trash you can undo until you empty it. To see how much space photos take first, follow how to check iPhone storage.