Convert HEIC to JPG
Turn iPhone HEIC photos into universally readable JPGs. What you gain in compatibility, what you lose in file size, and when to keep the original.
Convert HEIC to JPG now — HEIC image to JPEG image, free, no sign-up.
HEIC is the container Apple has used for photos by default since iOS 11 in 2017. Inside it, stills are encoded with HEVC, which is dramatically more efficient than JPEG's decades-old compression — a typical iPhone photo lands at roughly half the size of the equivalent JPEG at comparable visual quality. That efficiency is exactly why Apple adopted it, and it is also why so many other programs still choke on it.
Why convert at all?
Compatibility, almost always. Windows needs a codec extension to preview HEIC in File Explorer, plenty of Android builds handle it inconsistently, and a long tail of desktop software — older Photoshop versions, print shop upload forms, university submission portals, CMS media libraries — will simply reject the file. JPEG is the closest thing to a universal image format, so converting is usually about getting a file that other people's software will accept.
What you lose
This is a lossy-to-lossy transcode, so be clear-eyed about the trade:
- File size roughly doubles. You are re-encoding into a less efficient format. There is no way around this.
- Only one image survives. A HEIC file can hold a Live Photo, a burst sequence, or a depth map used for Portrait mode. JPEG holds exactly one frame, so everything else is discarded.
- 10-bit becomes 8-bit. HEIC supports 10-bit colour depth; baseline JPEG does not. In smooth gradients — skies, studio backdrops — you may see faint banding that was not in the original.
- Generational quality loss. Decoding HEVC and re-encoding as JPEG throws away a little detail. It is usually invisible at normal viewing sizes, but it compounds if you keep converting the same image repeatedly.
EXIF metadata — capture date, camera model, exposure settings, and GPS coordinates if location was enabled — is carried across. If you are about to publish the photo somewhere public, that GPS tag is worth thinking about.
A better default
Keep the HEIC originals and treat the JPGs as disposable export copies. Because the conversion is lossy and one-way, deleting the HEIC means you can never get the depth map, the extra bit depth, or the smaller file back. If you want to stop producing HEIC in the first place, iOS has a setting: Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible shoots JPEG directly, at the cost of storage.
If you need transparency
JPEG has no alpha channel. If your image has transparent regions, they will be flattened — usually to black, sometimes to white, depending on the encoder. Convert to PNG or WebP instead.