HEIC to JPG Converter

Why the iPhone stopped saving JPGs

Apple switched the default camera format to HEIC with iOS 11 in 2017. HEIC is a container holding an image compressed with HEVC, the same video codec used for 4K streaming. Applied to a still photograph, HEVC intra-frame coding is roughly twice as efficient as the JPEG algorithm from 1992.

In practice a 12 megapixel photo off an iPhone lands around 1.8 to 2.4 MB as HEIC where the same shot as a JPEG would be 3.5 to 4.5 MB. Across a few thousand photos that is tens of gigabytes of storage, which is why Apple made the change and why it is still the default.

HEIC also supports things JPEG cannot: 10 bit colour depth, an alpha channel, depth maps for portrait mode, and multiple images in one file.

Where HEIC falls over

The format is technically better and practically inconvenient. Common places it fails:

• Older Windows installs show a grey placeholder in File Explorer unless the HEIF Image Extensions package is installed from the Microsoft Store.
• Plenty of web upload forms accept only JPG and PNG, including job application portals, government forms, insurance claim uploads and older e-commerce back ends.
• Email clients frequently will not render HEIC inline, so the recipient gets an attachment they cannot preview.
• Print shops, photo book services and some online printers reject the format outright.
• Older versions of image editors, and most cheap photo frames and TVs, cannot decode it.

JPG is the lowest common denominator, which is exactly why it is worth converting to.

What the quality slider actually costs you

The slider runs from 0.10 to 1.00 and sits at 0.90 by default. It sets the JPEG encoder quality for the re-encode.

Rough guide for a 12 MP photo starting from a 2 MB HEIC:

• 1.00 gives about 8 to 10 MB. Almost no visible benefit over 0.95 and a large file.
• 0.90, the default, gives about 3 to 4 MB. Artefacts are effectively invisible at normal viewing size.
• 0.80 gives about 1.8 to 2.5 MB. Fine for web use and email. Slight softening in smooth gradients like sky.
• 0.60 gives about 900 KB. Blocking becomes visible around high contrast edges and text in the scene.
• 0.30 and below is only useful when you need a tiny file and do not care how it looks.

Note that even at quality 1.00 the result is not identical to the HEIC. You are decoding one lossy format and re-encoding into another, so a small amount of detail is lost no matter what. Keep the originals.

If you have a specific size target rather than a quality target, Compress Image to KB is the better tool once you have a JPG.

What does not come through

The conversion produces pixels, and several things attached to the original are not carried into the JPG.

EXIF metadata. Camera model, exposure, ISO, the date taken and any GPS coordinates are not written into the output. For privacy that is a bonus. For photo library organisation it is a problem, because many apps sort by the date taken rather than the file date, and converted photos can land at today's date. If you need to check what a file carried before converting, use EXIF Viewer and Remover on the original.

Depth and portrait data. The depth map that lets Photos re-adjust background blur after the fact is discarded. The blur that was already baked into the visible image stays.

HDR and 10 bit colour. JPEG is 8 bits per channel, so an HDR HEIC is tone mapped down. Bright highlights that looked luminous on an iPhone screen will look ordinary.

Transparency. Rare in camera photos, but if a HEIC has an alpha channel, JPEG cannot store it. For those files use HEIC to PNG instead.

Live Photo motion. Only the still frame is converted. The short video clip lives in a separate file on the device and is not part of the .heic.

Batch behaviour and practical limits

Drop as many .heic or .heif files as you like. Anything without one of those extensions or MIME types is skipped with a message, so you cannot accidentally run a JPG through it. Conversion happens one file at a time with a counter showing progress.

A single file downloads directly with the original name and a .jpg extension. Two or more are bundled into heic-to-jpg.zip, assembled in the browser.

The honest limit is memory. Decoding HEIC in a browser tab is heavy, and each 12 MP photo expands to roughly 48 MB of raw pixel data while it is being processed. Batches of 20 to 30 are comfortable on a typical laptop. Dropping 300 photos at once risks the tab running out of memory partway through. Work in chunks if you are converting a whole camera roll. Individual files that fail to decode are skipped with a message rather than killing the whole batch.

Everything runs in your browser, so your files never leave your device. Only the decoder library is fetched from a CDN, once, when the page loads.

Questions about HEIC and JPG

Will the JPG be bigger than the HEIC?

Usually yes, often close to double at the default quality. HEVC compresses a still far more efficiently than JPEG does, so gaining compatibility costs you file size. Lower the quality slider if size matters more than fidelity.

Does the converted photo keep the date it was taken?

No. EXIF is not written into the output, so the date taken, camera details and GPS are all absent. Some photo apps will fall back to the file creation date, which will be the date you converted.

Can I stop my iPhone producing HEIC at all?

Yes. In Settings, under Camera then Formats, choose Most Compatible instead of High Efficiency. New photos will be captured as JPG. Existing HEIC files stay as they are.

Why did one file fail while the rest worked?

Some HEIC variants, particularly multi-image files, burst sequences and files partially copied from a device, do not decode cleanly. That file is skipped and the remaining ones still convert. Opening it on the phone and re-exporting usually produces a file that works.

Is a .heif file the same thing?

Close enough for this purpose. HEIF is the container standard and HEIC is Apple's naming for HEIF files holding HEVC-coded images. Both extensions are accepted here.