How to convert HEIC to JPG on any device

If a photo from your iPhone refuses to open on a Windows PC, or a website tells you the file format is unsupported, the cause is almost always HEIC. It is not a corrupted file — it is a perfectly good photograph in a format that plenty of software still does not read.

What HEIC actually is

HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) stores images using the HEVC codec, the same video compression family behind H.265. It does its job well: at equivalent visual quality a HEIC file is typically 40–50% smaller than the equivalent JPEG, which is why Apple switched iPhones to it by default.

The problem is not quality, it is compatibility. HEIC support is uneven across operating systems and applications, and many web upload forms accept only JPG and PNG. That mismatch is the entire reason people end up searching for a converter.

Where HEIC causes trouble

• Windows 10 and 11 without the HEIF Image Extensions pack — thumbnails stay blank and double-clicking does nothing useful.
• Android devices other than the newest models.
• Older versions of Photoshop, Illustrator and many photo editors.
• Online forms, visa portals and job application systems.
• Most browsers, if you try to display the file directly from disk.

Option 1: stop creating them

On iPhone, go to Settings → Camera → Formats and select Most Compatible. New photographs will be saved as JPEG from then on.

Two caveats. This only affects photos taken afterwards — your existing library stays HEIC. And you lose the space saving, which on a 256 GB phone is not trivial. The alternative is to keep HEIC for storage and convert on export: when you share a photo through the iOS share sheet, most target apps automatically receive a JPEG, and AirDrop to a Mac converts too. The failure case is transferring files as data — through a cable, a cloud drive or a file manager — because that preserves the original HEIC.

Option 2: convert the files you already have

The image converter converts in batches entirely inside your browser. Choose the files, set the output format to JPG, set the quality — 0.9 is a good default, 0.8 if you want smaller files — and convert. You can also convert to PNG or WebP if that suits you better.

Because the conversion happens on your own device, there is nothing to install and nothing to upload. That is not just a privacy convenience: upload-based converters impose file-count limits, queue your images behind other people's, and give you no way to process a personal photo library in bulk.

Does converting lose quality?

Slightly, and unavoidably. JPEG is a lossy format, so a HEIC-to-JPEG conversion is a lossy-to-lossy transcode. At quality 0.9 the difference is not visible at normal viewing size, and you keep all the resolution. Convert to PNG instead if you need a lossless result, at the cost of a much larger file — which is rarely worth it for photographs but can make sense for screenshots.

Converting a large library

Select the whole batch at once rather than twenty files at a time: the tool processes them sequentially and shows the result of each one as it finishes. Expect the browser to use a noticeable amount of memory on a large set, and if it starts to slow down, work in batches of fifty or so.