Convert iPhone HEIC Photos to JPG
Your iPhone saves photos as HEIC by default. That's fine as long as you stay in the Apple ecosystem — but the moment you try to use those photos elsewhere, HEIC causes headaches. Website upload forms reject it. Windows PCs often can't open it without a codec. Older software doesn't know it exists. This converter fixes that: drop your HEIC files, get JPGs back, entirely in your browser.
Try HEIC to JPG Converter free →
The problem
iPhones have saved photos as HEIC since iOS 11. HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) is 40–50% smaller than JPG at the same visual quality, which is genuinely useful for phone storage. Apple made a smart engineering choice here. The problem is compatibility.
Windows PCs don't open HEIC files natively without installing a codec from the Microsoft Store. Many website upload forms only accept JPG, PNG, or WebP and will silently reject your HEIC. Older Android phones can't open them at all. Design tools, CMS platforms, and email clients all handle HEIC inconsistently. If you're sharing photos with anyone outside the Apple ecosystem, you'll run into this constantly.
The usual workarounds — emailing photos to yourself (which triggers an automatic conversion), using cloud services, or installing desktop software — are slow and often involve your photos being uploaded somewhere you don't control.
How it works
- Get your HEIC files off your iPhone — AirDrop to a Mac or PC, USB cable transfer, or email them to yourself (note: emailing triggers Apple's auto-conversion, so use AirDrop or USB if you want to convert manually).
- Drop the HEIC files into the converter. You can do multiple files at once.
- The conversion happens instantly in your browser. No files leave your device. Download the JPGs when ready.
The output quality matches the original HEIC compression — there's no additional quality loss in the conversion process beyond what was already in the HEIC file.
Why I built it
Family members kept sending me HEIC photos I couldn't open easily on Windows. Every existing converter either required a software download or uploaded your photos to some server I'd never heard of. For personal photos especially, that felt wrong. A browser-based tool that never sends your files anywhere was the obvious answer — I just needed to build it.
HEIC vs JPG comparison
| Feature | HEIC | JPG |
|---|---|---|
| File size | 40–50% smaller | Larger |
| Image quality | Excellent | Good |
| Transparency | Yes | No |
| Apple device support | Native | Native |
| Windows support | Requires codec | Native |
| Web upload forms | Often rejected | Always accepted |
| Editing software support | Limited | Universal |
| Email compatibility | Inconsistent | Universal |
How to change your iPhone to save as JPG
If you'd rather have your iPhone shoot in JPG from the start and skip the conversion step entirely, you can change this in Settings:
- Open Settings on your iPhone.
- Scroll down and tap Camera.
- Tap Formats.
- Select Most Compatible.
This makes the camera save JPGs instead of HEIC. The trade-off is storage: JPGs are 40–50% larger per photo. If you take a lot of photos and storage is a concern, keeping HEIC and converting only what you need to share is the better approach.
Built with vanilla HTML/JS. No frameworks, no backend, loads instantly.