HEIC to JPG Converter
HEIC to JPG Converter
Turn iPhone HEIC photos into universal JPGs — in your browser. No upload, no signup.
100% private — your photos never leave this browser. Airplane-mode test: load this page, turn on airplane mode, and conversion still works.
HEIC is the photo format iPhones have used by default since iOS 11 — and Windows PCs, Chrome, and most web forms can't open it. JPG works everywhere: every phone, computer, printer, and website accepts it. This free tool converts your HEIC photos to JPG right in your browser in seconds. No uploads, no signup — your photos never leave your device.
Why Windows can't open HEIC files from your iPhone
If you've ever transferred iPhone photos to a Windows PC and been greeted by blank thumbnails or an error in the Photos app, you've hit the HEIC wall. HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) stores photos with the HEVC/H.265 video codec, which squeezes roughly the same image quality as JPG into about half the file size. Apple made it the iPhone default back in 2017 because it saves precious phone storage.
The problem is licensing, not laziness. HEVC is covered by patent pools, so Microsoft doesn't bundle the decoder with Windows — it sells HEIF Image Extensions and HEVC Video Extensions as separate Microsoft Store add-ons instead. Without them, File Explorer can't generate thumbnails and the Photos app throws an error. Chrome, Firefox, and Edge can't display HEIC either, and countless upload forms — visa and passport portals, job applications, university systems, insurance claims — reject anything that isn't a JPG or PNG.
Even installing Microsoft's codec is only a partial fix: plenty of desktop software, older tools, and web services still refuse HEIC files outright. The one fix that works everywhere, on every device, is converting the photo to JPG once — which is exactly what the tool above does.
How this converter works — nothing leaves your browser
Drop your HEIC photos onto the tool and each one starts converting automatically. A HEIC decoder (the open-source heic2any library) runs directly on your device via WebAssembly, decodes the photo, and re-encodes it as a JPG at the quality you choose. There is no server in the loop at any point.
Don't take our word for it — try the airplane-mode test: load this page, switch your phone or laptop to airplane mode, and convert a photo. It still works, because your files never travel anywhere. That's a sharp contrast with cloud converters, which upload your photos to a server and typically keep them anywhere from an hour to 30 days. Fine for landscapes; a real risk for IDs, documents, or family photos.
Two honest technical notes: only the main still photo is converted (Live Photo video frames aren't included), and the re-encoding strips EXIF location metadata — which is actually a privacy bonus when you're about to share a photo with a stranger or a company. The decoder itself downloads once on your first visit (about a megabyte); after that, conversions start instantly.
Batch conversion and picking the right JPG quality
Converting one photo at a time gets old fast, so this tool handles whole albums: drop in as many HEIC files as you like, each converts automatically with its own progress indicator, and one corrupt file fails on its own while the rest of the queue keeps going. Download JPGs individually or grab everything as a single ZIP.
Every finished file shows its before-and-after size — and you'll often notice the JPG is bigger than the HEIC you started with. That's expected: HEIC is already a highly efficient format, so re-encoding to JPG at high quality re-expands the file. The quality slider (50–100, default 92) controls the trade-off: 95–100 for archiving and printing, 85–90 is the sweet spot for everyday sharing, and 70–80 for email attachments or web uploads with strict size limits.
If the converted JPG is too big for a form's upload limit, run it through our free image compressor to shrink it under 1MB without visible quality loss. Need a different output format? Try the image converter for PNG and WebP, or the image resizer when a form also caps the photo's dimensions.
Stop your iPhone saving photos as HEIC
Tired of converting altogether? Change the camera setting once: on your iPhone, open Settings → Camera → Formats and choose Most Compatible. From that moment on, new photos save as JPG (and video as H.264) — every device and website will accept them without conversion. This doesn't change photos you've already taken; convert those with the tool above.
The trade-off is storage: JPGs take up roughly twice the space of HEICs. A good middle ground is keeping HEIC on the phone but letting iOS convert during transfer: go to Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC → Automatic, and your iPhone will hand over JPGs whenever you copy photos via cable or AirDrop, while keeping the compact originals on the device.
How to convert HEIC to JPG
- Add your HEIC photos — drag and drop them onto the tool, or click to browse (.heic, .heif, .hif). Conversion starts automatically.
- Set the JPG quality — 92 is a great default; lower it for smaller files.
- Download — save each JPG individually, or download the whole batch as one ZIP.
Windows doesn't ship with the HEVC codec needed to decode HEIC, because the codec is patent-licensed and Microsoft sells it as a separate add-on instead of bundling it. Even with the add-on installed, many apps and websites still refuse HEIC files. Converting to JPG is the one fix that works everywhere.
Quality 92 (the default here) preserves virtually all visible detail. Use 85–90 for everyday sharing and social media, 70–80 for email attachments and web uploads with size limits, and 95–100 when archiving or printing. Remember that JPG is lossy — for a perfect archive, keep the original HEIC too.
Yes — this page works in mobile Safari and Chrome, and the conversion runs on the phone itself, so nothing is uploaded. Alternatively, stop the problem at the source: Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible makes the iPhone save JPGs going forward.
Open Settings → Camera → Formats and select Most Compatible. New photos will save as JPG from then on. This doesn't affect photos already taken (convert those above), and JPGs use roughly twice the storage of HEICs.