The HEIC problem, in one paragraph
Since iOS 11 shipped in 2017, every photo your iPhone takes is saved as HEIC by default. HEIC files are typically about half the size of the equivalent JPG at the same visual quality, which is great for the photo library on your phone. The problem starts the moment you try to send one of those photos anywhere. Slack rejects HEIC uploads on web. Most Android phones can't display them. Windows shows you a "this file can't be opened" dialog. Web forms reject the file type. Google Docs throws an error. Discord refuses the attachment. Your accountant emails you back asking what format that file is. Apple shipped a format that's wonderful inside Apple's own software and unusable outside it, and they've left the rest of us to figure out the bridge.
That bridge is JPG. JPG has been the universal photo format since 1992. Every operating system, every email client, every messaging app, every web upload form, every printer, every photo lab, every social platform accepts JPG. The HEIC to JPG Converter does one thing: take the iPhone photo, give you back the same image as a JPG, in your browser, without uploading anything anywhere.
Why your photos never leave your machine
Every other HEIC converter on the web works the same way. You drag your iPhone photo onto their site, the file uploads to their server, their server decodes it, their server re-encodes it as JPG, you download the result. Sometimes the server keeps a copy. Sometimes it doesn't. You have no way to verify either claim. For your tax-return scans, your medical-form photos, your kids' school photos, your draft product launch screenshots — sending those to a stranger's server is a privacy decision you probably didn't intend to make.
The HEIC to JPG Converter doesn't have a server-side step. It uses heic2any, a JavaScript wrapper around libheif — the same open-source HEIC decoder that runs in Linux distros and image-processing pipelines worldwide — compiled to WebAssembly so it runs inside your browser. The WASM binary is about 270 KB, lazy-loaded only when you actually open the page. From there, every byte of every photo stays in your browser tab's memory until you download the JPG.
Open your browser's network tab before clicking Convert. You'll see zero outbound requests during the conversion. The photo bytes go from your file system, to the browser's WASM runtime, to a JPG blob, to your downloads folder. Nothing in the middle.
Apple ships HEIC support natively on Macs, so a Mac user with Preview can right-click and export as JPG. That works for one or two files. Try it with thirty photos and you'll be there for ten minutes, opening and exporting each one. This tool handles thirty in about a minute, in any browser, on any operating system — Mac, Windows, Linux, ChromeOS, even an iPad if you really want.
Apps and platforms that reject HEIC
Knowing where HEIC actually breaks is worth more than abstract claims about compatibility. Here's a list of common places HEIC fails, based on testing as of late 2025:
| Destination | HEIC support | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Slack (web) | Rejects | Upload fails with "unsupported file type." Mobile apps sometimes accept but don't render previews. |
| Gmail attachment | Accepts file | Attaches fine, but most recipients can't open it. Effectively unusable. |
| Most Android phones | Partial | Newer Pixels (8+) can view; older devices and most Samsung/OnePlus can't. |
| Windows 10/11 | Optional codec | Requires a separate paid HEIF codec from Microsoft Store. Most users don't have it installed. |
| Google Docs / Sheets | Rejects | "This file type is not supported" on insert. |
| Discord | Rejects | Upload fails silently or shows error. |
| WordPress media library | Rejects by default | Requires a plugin. |
| Most web upload forms | Rejects | Job applications, government forms, insurance claims — JPG/PNG only. |
| Printing services (Walgreens, CVS, Costco) | Rejects | Almost universally JPG-only at the upload step. |
The pattern is consistent: if it isn't Apple software, assume HEIC doesn't work and convert before sending. JPG works everywhere, has worked everywhere for thirty years, and there's nothing magical about the iPhone's photos that requires HEIC for the recipient to see them at full quality.
Quality settings, and what each one actually means
The HEIC to JPG Converter offers three quality levels. They map to JPG encoder quality values:
- High (92%) — visually identical to the source HEIC on virtually every photo. Use this when you're archiving, printing, or sending to someone who will look at the image carefully.
- Standard (80%) — about 60 percent of the High file size, with no visible difference for normal viewing. Use this for general sharing — Slack, email, social, web forms.
- Compact (60%) — about 30 percent of the High file size. Visible quality drop on close inspection, but fine for previews, low-bandwidth contexts, or images that will display small.
Worked example: an iPhone 14 portrait photo at the camera's default resolution (3024 x 4032 pixels), taken in good light. Original HEIC: 2.1 MB. Converted to JPG at High: 3.8 MB. At Standard: 1.5 MB. At Compact: 720 KB. The JPG at High is bigger than the HEIC because JPG simply isn't as efficient as HEIC at the same visual quality — that's the trade-off you're making for universal compatibility. The JPG at Standard is smaller than the HEIC AND visually equivalent for normal viewing, which is why Standard is the default for most users.
Live Photos, ProRAW, and the weird cases
iPhone photos come in several flavors and they don't all behave the same way through conversion.
A regular HEIC photo (the kind you get when you tap the shutter in Photo mode) converts cleanly. Open it, click Convert, download the JPG. Done.
A Live Photo is technically two files: a HEIC for the still frame, and a short MOV video for the motion. When you AirDrop or copy a Live Photo, you usually get just the HEIC — the video component lives separately in iCloud or your Photos library. This tool converts the HEIC part normally; you get the still frame as JPG. The motion component is a video, and converting a video to a still image is a different kind of operation entirely. If you specifically need the "motion" preserved, your options are sharing as a video file or as an animated GIF, neither of which this tool handles. The still frame from a Live Photo, which is what almost everyone actually wants, works fine.
ProRAW is a different format altogether. ProRAW photos save as DNG (Adobe's Digital Negative format), not HEIC. If your iPhone is set to capture ProRAW (Settings > Camera > Formats > Apple ProRAW) and you grab a "raw" image, it's a DNG file with a different extension and a different internal structure. This tool only handles HEIC; for DNG, the typical workflow is Photos app on macOS, export as JPG, then send. If we add DNG support later, this article will say so.
Quick test: look at the file extension. .heic or .heif means this tool handles it. .dng means ProRAW and you'll need a different workflow. .jpg means it's already a JPG and there's nothing to do.
Batch conversion that actually scales
Most people don't convert one HEIC at a time. The use case that drives most HEIC-to-JPG traffic is "I took 80 photos at my kid's birthday and now I need to share them with grandparents who use Windows." That's a batch job. macOS Preview can do it — file by file, opening each in a tab, exporting each — and you can finish a job like that in about half an hour if you're efficient. This tool handles the same job in about two minutes.
Drop the whole folder onto the page. Every HEIC is queued. Each one decodes in 1 to 3 seconds depending on the photo's resolution and your machine's speed. The list shows you per-file progress; you can grab finished JPGs while the rest are still converting, or wait until everything's done and click Download All for sequential downloads.
The 200 MB combined cap is a memory limit, not an artificial restriction. HEIC decoding in a browser tab uses real RAM, and once you're past a few hundred megabytes of in-flight images the browser starts to feel sluggish. For genuinely huge batches (a wedding photographer's day, a real-estate inspection album), do them in chunks of 30 to 50. The output filenames mirror the input — IMG_4523.HEIC becomes IMG_4523.jpg — so they slot back into whatever sorted order you had.
How this compares to the rest of the field
Search "HEIC to JPG" and you'll find a long list of conversion sites: iLoveIMG, Convertio, CloudConvert, HEIC-Converter.com, Aconvert, FreeConvert, AnyConv. They all do the same thing structurally: upload your photo, wait for the server to convert it, download the result. They work, with the same privacy trade-off — your photos transit and briefly reside on someone else's machine.
The macOS Preview workflow is the privacy-clean alternative if you're on a Mac. Open the HEIC in Preview, File > Export, choose JPEG, set quality, save. For one or two files this is fine. For batch jobs it's painfully slow because Preview doesn't expose a "convert all open files" action that respects per-file naming. For batches of dozens of photos, you end up either scripting AppleScript or installing a third-party batch utility — at which point you're back to "should I trust this tool with my photos?"
The HEIC to JPG Converter does what Preview does — a libheif-based decode and a JPG encode — but in your browser, with no upload, on any operating system, with proper batch UX. The conversion math is the same; the trust model is "your photos stay on your machine, verifiable in the network tab." If your end goal is a JPG that's also been resized or recompressed for a specific purpose, chain this with the Image Compressor or Image Resizer after conversion.
Frequently asked questions
Why doesn't HEIC just work everywhere?
HEIC is Apple's preferred photo format because it produces smaller files than JPG at the same visual quality. Apple ships HEIC support in Safari, macOS Preview, and iOS. Microsoft, Google, and most other vendors don't ship native HEIC support by default — Windows requires a paid codec from the Microsoft Store, Android support varies by device, and most web platforms simply reject the format. Converting to JPG fixes the compatibility problem; JPG is universal.
Is my photo actually staying on my device?
Yes. The conversion uses heic2any (a wrapper around libheif compiled to WebAssembly) which decodes HEIC in your browser's WASM runtime. Your photo bytes go from your file system to browser memory to a JPG blob — never to any server. Open the network tab during conversion and you'll see zero outbound requests after the page initially loaded.
What's the difference between HEIC and HEIF?
HEIF (High Efficiency Image Format) is the container format. HEIC is the specific variant that uses HEVC (H.265) compression for the image data. iPhones produce HEIC. Some other cameras produce HEIF with different codecs (like AV1). This tool handles both, though iPhone HEIC is the case it's tuned for and tested against.
Can I batch-convert hundreds of photos at once?
Yes, in chunks. Drop multiple files or pick a whole folder from the file picker. The 200 MB combined cap protects browser memory; for batches larger than that, do them in groups of 30 to 50. Each file converts independently, with its own progress indicator, and downloads with the original filename plus a .jpg extension.
Do Live Photos convert properly?
The HEIC part of a Live Photo (the still frame) converts cleanly. The motion component is a separate MOV video file that lives elsewhere in your photo library; this tool doesn't handle videos. If you only see one image when you expected motion, you've got the still — that's expected behavior. For preserving motion, share as a video file from the Photos app directly.
What about ProRAW photos?
ProRAW saves as DNG (Adobe Digital Negative), not HEIC. Different format, different internals. This tool doesn't currently handle DNG. For ProRAW conversion, the standard workflow is: open in Photos on a Mac, export as JPG at the quality you want, then transfer. If you take ProRAW occasionally and HEIC most of the time, you can tell them apart by file extension — .dng vs .heic.
Do JPG file dates match the original iPhone capture time?
The file's modification date will be the moment of conversion, not the iPhone capture time. However, the HEIC's embedded EXIF metadata (which contains the actual capture date, GPS coordinates, camera settings, etc.) carries through into the JPG output. Open the JPG in any photo viewer that reads EXIF and you'll see the original capture date — it's just not on the filesystem timestamp.
What if I want PNG output instead of JPG?
Use the HEIC to PNG converter. PNG is lossless — every pixel preserved — but the output files are 3 to 5 times larger than JPG. PNG is the right choice for photo editing, screenshots, or design assets where pixel-perfect output matters. JPG is the right choice for general sharing.
Can I convert HEIC to PDF directly?
Yes — the HEIC to PDF tool does it in one step. Drop your HEIC files, get a PDF with each photo on its own page. Useful for compiling receipt photos, document scans, or photo evidence into a single shareable file.