How to Convert HEIC to JPG on iPhone, Mac, Windows and Android

Apple switched the iPhone camera from JPG to HEIC with iOS 11 in September 2017, on the iPhone 7 and every model since. HEIC is a HEIF file whose picture is compressed with HEVC, the H.265 video codec, and Apple's own figure is that it stores a photo in roughly half the space of a JPG at similar quality. On a phone where a single trip can produce a thousand pictures, that halving is the whole argument: more photos per gigabyte of storage and per iCloud plan. If you want the deeper comparison with WebP and AVIF, our guide to AVIF, HEIC and WebP covers how the formats differ; this article is only about getting a JPG out the other end.

HEIC also does things JPG cannot. It holds 10-bit color, so skies and skin tones get smoother gradients; it can carry a depth map from Portrait mode, an HDR gain map that lets newer iPhones show brighter highlights, and several images inside one file. Inside the Apple world none of this causes trouble, because iPhone, iPad and every Mac since macOS High Sierra read HEIC natively. The trouble starts the moment a photo leaves that world, and the default camera setting on a new iPhone is still High Efficiency, which means HEIC.

The failures follow a pattern. Software that reads files on its own, rather than asking the operating system, often has no HEIC decoder at all. That covers most web upload forms, which check the file extension against a short list of .jpg, .jpeg and .png and refuse everything else, as well as older photo editors, office software and the self-service printing kiosks found in pharmacies and photo shops.

Operating systems are better but uneven. Windows 10 and 11 show a HEIC only after you add Microsoft's extensions; Android has decoded HEIF since Android 9, yet messaging apps and older phones may still show a grey box. Government, school and job portals are the strictest of all: an application form asking for a passport photo or a scanned ID usually names JPEG explicitly, sometimes with a size cap too. In every one of these cases a JPG fixes it.

Before you convert anything, check whether the phone can do it for you. iOS has three separate places where HEIC turns into JPG without any extra step, and between them they cover most everyday sharing. The catch is that none of them touches photos that have already left the phone as HEIC: those still need one of the conversion methods further down. Each of the three works on any iPhone running iOS 11 or later, and changing one does not affect the others, so you can combine them.

Which setting to change depends on what bothers you. If you regularly upload straight from the phone to forms that refuse HEIC, switch the camera format and accept files about twice as large. If the problem is only your Windows PC, leave the camera alone and change the transfer setting instead, so the phone keeps the storage saving and the PC still receives JPG. Mail and the Share Sheet need no setting at all; they are worth knowing mainly so you are not surprised when someone tells you they received a JPG.

The iPhone itself has two hidden converters. The quickest is the Files app: select photos in Photos, tap the share button and choose Copy Photos, then open Files, long-press inside a folder and choose Paste. The pasted copies are saved as JPG. For a repeatable job, build a three-action shortcut in the Shortcuts app: Select Photos, Convert Image to JPEG (with Preserve Metadata on if you want the date kept), then Save to Photo Album.

On a Mac, Preview converts one photo or a whole selection: open the files, choose File → Export (or Export Selected Images for several), set Format to JPEG and drag the quality slider to taste. The Photos app does the same through File → Export → Export Photos with Photo Kind set to JPEG; avoid Export Unmodified Original, which hands you the HEIC again. On Windows 10 or 11, install the free HEIF Image Extensions, and HEVC Video Extensions if the Photos app still asks for it (a 0.99 USD add-on in the Microsoft Store). Then open the photo in Paint and use File → Save as → JPEG picture.

Android is the least uniform. Phones running Android 9 or later can open HEIC in the gallery, and Samsung's Gallery app has a setting that converts HEIF pictures to JPG when you share them. On other phones, and on Chromebooks, the reliable route is the browser, which works the same on any device and is covered in the next section. Whichever route you use, check the file extension afterwards: some gallery apps show a HEIC thumbnail perfectly and still pass the original .heic file on when you share it.

The built-in tools work one photo or one small selection at a time, and on Windows they need the extensions first. When you have a folder of holiday photos, or you are on a work PC where you cannot install anything, a browser converter is faster: the HEIC to JPG converter takes up to 20 photos per round, 95 MB each, with nothing to install and no account. The files are deleted from the server 30 minutes after processing.

Two defaults matter. Quality starts at 90, which keeps camera photos visually identical to the HEIC while staying far smaller than quality 100. Strip metadata is on, which removes GPS coordinates along with the camera details; that is the safer choice before a photo goes on a public site, but untick it if you want the date taken to survive for sorting in a photo library. If you need an editable master rather than a shareable copy, HEIC to PNG keeps every pixel losslessly at several times the size.

A JPG made from a HEIC is the same picture at the same resolution, with the same crop, filters and edits you applied in Photos, because iOS renders those into the exported image. EXIF metadata (date and time taken, camera model, lens, exposure and, if you keep it, GPS location) transfers into the JPG's own EXIF block. Orientation is applied to the pixels so the photo stands upright everywhere. Color stays in Display P3 when the color profile is kept, so reds and greens look the same as they did on the phone.

What does not survive is everything HEIC can store beyond a single 8-bit image. JPG has no slot for a depth map, so a Portrait photo keeps its blur exactly as rendered but loses the ability to change the focus point later. The HDR gain map is dropped too, so a photo that looked bright on an iPhone 15 screen will look like a normal SDR picture; that is often why a converted shot seems a little flatter. Ten-bit color is reduced to eight bits, which only shows in smooth gradients such as a clear blue sky. Keep the HEIC original whenever any of that matters to you.

Expect the JPG to be bigger. A 12 MP HEIC from an iPhone is typically 1.5 to 3 MB, and the same photo as a JPG at quality 90 usually lands between 3 and 5 MB, depending on how much fine detail it holds; a sharp shot of foliage grows more than a soft portrait background. Since the iPhone 15, the default is 24 MP, so both numbers roughly double. If the destination caps uploads at a few hundred KB, convert first, then compress or resize the JPG; our guide to reducing image size in KB explains how to hit a target.

A Live Photo is two files: a HEIC still and a three-second MOV clip that Photos plays when you press the picture. Every conversion method in this article, including the Files trick, produces the still only. If you want the motion as well, open the Live Photo, tap Share and choose Save as Video, then send the video separately. The still you get is the Key Photo, which you can change in Photos before converting by tapping Edit and picking another frame.

Bursts work the same way. A burst is a stack of HEIC frames shown as one thumbnail, and exporting it gives you only the cover frame. Open the burst, tap Select, mark the frames you want to keep and let Photos save them as individual photos; they then convert like any other picture, 20 per round in a browser. Bursts are common with sports and pet photos, so one afternoon can leave hundreds of near-identical frames; picking the keepers first saves converting files you will delete anyway.