Free HEIC to JPG Converter

What is HEIC?

HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) is a modern image format introduced by Apple for iPhones and iPads. It offers better compression than JPEG while maintaining image quality, reducing file sizes by up to 40%. However, HEIC files are not widely supported on all devices and platforms, making conversion to JPG essential for sharing photos universally.

More precisely, HEIC is the ISO/IEC 23008-12 HEIF container holding still-image data coded with the H.265/HEVC video codec. Apple shipped HEIC as the default Camera format on the iPhone 7 and later starting with iOS 11 in 2017. The underlying HEVC compression is roughly 50% more efficient than JPEG at perceptually identical quality, which is why a typical iPhone snapshot saves to 1.5-2 MB as HEIC instead of the 3-4 MB it would have taken as JPEG. The trade-off is licensing complexity: HEVC patents are pooled across MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, Velos Media and other licensors, which is why most platforms outside Apple's ecosystem cannot decode HEIC natively even in 2026.

Converting HEIC to JPEG goes against the file-size grain: the output is typically larger than the input, because JPEG (a 1992 standard) is less efficient than HEVC (a 2013 standard). A 2 MB iPhone HEIC normally becomes a 3-4 MB JPEG at quality 85. You accept that growth in exchange for universal compatibility: JPEG works on every operating system, email client, content management system, photo-print kiosk and legacy device built in the last thirty years. HEIC works reliably only inside the Apple ecosystem (iOS, macOS, current iPadOS), partially on Windows 11 with the paid HEVC extension, and on Android only with third-party viewers.

How this tool works under the hood

The conversion engine is heic2any by Alexander Larsson (GitHub: alexcorvi/heic2any, MIT licence), which wraps the canonical C++ HEIF decoder libheif (by struktur AG, LGPL) compiled to WebAssembly. When you drop a file, heic2any hands the bytes to the WebAssembly module: libheif parses the ISOBMFF container, locates the HEVC-coded image item, decodes the HEVC bitstream to raw RGBA pixel data, and applies the EXIF orientation if present. The pixel buffer is then drawn onto an in-memory <canvas> element.

From the canvas, canvas.toBlob('image/jpeg', quality/100) invokes the browser's built-in JPEG encoder. The encoder performs the standard JPEG pipeline (RGB to YCbCr conversion, optional chroma subsampling, 8x8 DCT blocks, quantization with the tables corresponding to your slider value, zigzag scan, run-length and Huffman entropy coding). The slider range (60-100) maps directly to the encoder's quality argument. For multi-file batches, JSZip (Stuart Knightley, MIT/GPL dual) packages every JPEG output into a single ZIP archive that the browser then serves as one download.

The library bundle is significant: heic2any minified is about 700 KB because the libheif WebAssembly module is embedded, and JSZip adds another 95 KB. On first visit roughly 800 KB downloads from the CDN; subsequent visits run from the cache. After that initial fetch nothing else leaves the browser. The HEIC bytes you select never touch a server. Open DevTools' Network tab while you convert a batch: the only requests are the one-time library fetches on the very first load. Switch the browser to airplane mode after the page is open and the converter keeps working on local HEIC files.

A brief history of HEIC and the formats around it

• JPEG, 1992. ITU-T T.81 / ISO/IEC 10918-1 standardized by the Joint Photographic Experts Group (formed 1986). 8x8 DCT blocks, YCbCr colour with chroma subsampling, quantization tables tuned for human vision. Universally implemented. Still the lingua franca of photographic interchange thirty-four years later.
• H.265 / HEVC, 2013. ITU-T H.265 / ISO/IEC 23008-2, the successor to H.264. Developed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding. Roughly 50% better compression than H.264 at equivalent quality. Designed for video; intra-coded frames can be extracted and stored as still images, which is the technical basis for HEIC.
• Apple announces HEIC, June 2017. At WWDC 2017, Apple unveiled iOS 11 with HEIC as the default Camera format on iPhone 7 and later. The framing: "twice as efficient as JPEG." The Settings → Camera → Formats → "Most Compatible" toggle was introduced at the same time as a fallback for users who needed JPEG.
• HEIF standard published, December 2017. ISO/IEC 23008-12 "Image File Format" finalised as part of the MPEG-H suite. Container based on the ISO Base Media File Format (the same family as MP4). HEIC is HEIF with HEVC coding; the same container holds AVIF (with AV1 coding), AVC (with H.264), or other future codecs.
• AVIF, 2019. The Alliance for Open Media released AVIF as a royalty-free still-image format using the AV1 codec inside the same HEIF container. Roughly 50% smaller than JPEG at equivalent quality, comparable to HEIC but without the HEVC patent encumbrance. By 2023 over 95% of browsers supported AVIF natively. HEIC remained stuck outside Safari for licensing reasons.
• 2026: the HEIC-to-JPEG conversion era continues. Nearly nine years after Apple's announcement, most non-Apple platforms still cannot decode HEIC natively. Chrome, Firefox and Edge do not ship HEVC still-image decoding. Windows 11 requires a paid Microsoft Store extension. Android relies on third-party viewers. The everyday workflow for cross-platform photo sharing remains: convert iPhone HEIC to JPEG before sending.

How It Works

1. Upload HEIC files: Drop or select one or multiple HEIC/HEIF files to convert.
2. Adjust quality: Choose JPG quality from 60% to 100% (default 85%).
3. Convert: Click "Convert All" to convert all files. Conversion happens instantly in your browser.
4. Download: Download individual files or all as a ZIP archive.

Why Convert HEIC to JPG?

• Universal compatibility: JPG works on all devices, cameras, and platforms.
• Easier sharing: HEIC support is limited on Android, Windows, and older devices.
• Better for web: Most websites and services expect JPG or PNG format.
• Offline processing: Convert without uploading or internet connection required.

Features

• Batch conversion: Convert multiple HEIC files at once.
• Quality control: Adjust JPG compression quality (60-100%).
• Instant download: Download individual JPGs or as a ZIP for multiple files.
• Privacy: All processing happens locally in your browser. Files never uploaded to any server.
• Thumbnail previews: See a preview of each converted image.
• File size comparison: View before and after file sizes.

Real-world HEIC-to-JPG workflows

• Emailing iPhone photos to a Windows or Linux user. A direct .HEIC attachment arrives at a recipient whose email client cannot decode it. Most Outlook installs on Windows, every email client on Linux, and many older mail apps simply show the file as "unsupported." Converting to JPEG first guarantees the image renders in the inbox. At quality 85, the output is roughly the size a JPEG iPhone snapshot would have been before Apple switched to HEIC.
• Uploading iPhone photos to a web app or CMS. Most platforms (older WordPress installs, internal tools, e-commerce listings, marketplaces, government portals, hospital patient-photo uploaders) accept JPEG and reject HEIC outright with cryptic error messages or silent upload failures. Pre-converting eliminates the troubleshooting round-trip when someone reports "the photo wouldn't upload."
• Long-term archival of iPhone photos. JPEG is a 1992 ISO standard implemented by virtually every imaging product since. HEIC is patent-encumbered and depends on the HEVC licensing ecosystem remaining stable, which is far from guaranteed for hardware you don't yet own in 2050. For a photo archive intended to outlive specific devices, JPEG is the more conservative long-term format.
• Submitting photos to contests, journalism, or stock-photo agencies. Submission specifications routinely require JPEG (with TIFF as the higher-quality alternative). HEIC is almost never accepted. Photography competitions, news agencies, picture desks, stock-photo platforms (Shutterstock, Adobe Stock, Getty), and most editorial workflows expect JPEG; conversion is mandatory.
• Photo-print services and kiosks. Walgreens, CVS, Costco Photo, Snapfish, Mpix, and the print kiosks in supermarkets and pharmacies vary widely in HEIC support. Major chains have added HEIC acceptance in recent years; smaller services and older self-service kiosks have not. Converting to JPEG before printing avoids the in-store discovery that your photos are unreadable.
• Sharing in Discord, Slack, or other group chats. Most chat platforms now accept HEIC uploads from iPhone Safari, but viewers on Chrome, Firefox or Android cannot decode the resulting HEIC inline. They see "unsupported file" or a placeholder thumbnail. Converting to JPEG before posting means everyone in the channel can see the photo, not just the Apple-platform readers.

Common pitfalls and what they mean

• The JPEG output is bigger than the HEIC input. A 2 MB iPhone HEIC typically becomes a 3-4 MB JPEG at quality 85. This is expected: HEVC (the codec inside HEIC) compresses about 50% more efficiently than JPEG. Conversion trades file size for universal compatibility. If file size matters more than compatibility (web hosting, email caps), pair this tool with the Image Compressor to drive the JPEG size back down.
• Live Photo motion is not preserved. A Live Photo on iPhone is a HEIC still image plus a 3-second .MOV companion file stored as a sidecar. This tool converts only the still image; the motion is discarded. To preserve the motion clip, use Apple Photos.app's export feature (which yields both files separately) or a desktop tool that bundles HEIC and MOV together.
• Portrait-mode depth maps are dropped. Portrait-mode HEIC files embed a separate depth-map track that lets Apple's Photos app re-edit the background blur after the fact. JPEG has no equivalent slot; the depth data is silently discarded on conversion. To keep depth maps for re-editing, stay in HEIC inside Apple Photos or use a depth-aware editor like Halide Mark II or Pixelmator Photo.
• HDR gain maps are lost. Newer iPhones save HDR photos as HEIC with a parallel gain-map track that adds brightness on HDR-capable screens. JPEG does not support gain maps. The converted JPEG looks fine on standard displays but loses the HDR pop on Apple's XDR and similar HDR displays. The new Ultra HDR JPEG variant (gain-map JPEG, 2023) addresses this but is not yet what most tools produce.
• EXIF mostly survives, ICC profiles sometimes do not. Camera info, lens, exposure settings, capture date, GPS coordinates, and orientation are preserved across the conversion. The embedded ICC colour profile and Apple-specific extension blocks may not survive Canvas re-encoding. For ordinary screen use that is invisible (almost everything is sRGB). For colour-managed print prep, use a profile-aware desktop tool like Preview's "Export As" or Photoshop.
• Quality 60-75 shows artifacts. The slider goes down to 60 to give file-size-conscious users a tighter option, but at 60 the JPEG quantization is aggressive enough to show blocking in flat regions (skies, walls, fabric). For distribution, stay at 85 or higher. Drop to 70-75 only if you need to fit a strict upload size cap and you have inspected the result.

Privacy: photos never leave your device

Every cloud-based HEIC converter (CloudConvert, Convertio, iLoveIMG, Aspose, FreeConvert, the dozens of "heic to jpg online" services) uploads your file to the operator's servers, runs their conversion, and returns the JPEG as a download. The privacy implications for iPhone photos are non-trivial because the files routinely embed: precise GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken (often accurate to a few meters), camera model and device identifier, capture date and time, Live Photo motion captures (3 seconds of audio and video around the shutter press), Portrait-mode depth maps that reveal 3D facial structure, faces detected by on-device machine learning. All of that goes to the operator's infrastructure. Most operators publish privacy policies committing to delete uploads within an hour or two and to encrypt in transit, and the larger ones (Cloudinary, Smallpdf) hold ISO/IEC 27001 certification. They have strong commercial reasons to honour those policies. But "deleted within an hour" is not "never seen." During that hour the photo content sits in operator infrastructure, accessible to any process or person with appropriate permissions, and visible in logs and backups according to whatever retention policy applies.

This converter never uploads anything. The entire pipeline (file pick, HEIC decode via libheif WebAssembly, Canvas re-encode to JPEG, optional ZIP packaging, download) runs inside your browser tab. No upload, no network request carrying photo data, no log entry. You can verify by opening the browser developer tools to the Network tab before converting: no request fires with image content. The only network traffic is the one-time fetch of the heic2any and jszip libraries on first visit (roughly 800 KB combined). After that they sit in the browser cache. Switch the browser to airplane mode after the page loads; the converter keeps working on any local HEIC file you select. For photos with anything sensitive (faces, locations, internal screenshots, ID documents), the browser-side trade is obviously worth making.

When another tool is the right choice

• Batch automation across hundreds of HEIC files. Use ImageMagick with libheif support (magick input.heic output.jpg), the heif-convert binary from libheif's command-line tools, or libvips via Sharp in Node.js. CLI tools handle thousands of files without re-loading 800 KB of WebAssembly per session, and they run from CI, deploy hooks, or cron tasks.
• Preserving Live Photo motion alongside the still image. Use Apple Photos.app's export feature: File → Export → Export Unmodified Original preserves both the HEIC still and the .MOV motion file as separate exports. Third-party tools like Lively (macOS) or Motion Stills handle the round-trip more elegantly. This browser tool drops the motion clip.
• Editing Portrait-mode photos with depth data. Use Apple's Photos app (Edit → Portrait) or depth-aware editors like Halide Mark II (iOS) or Pixelmator Photo. JPEG cannot store the depth-map track, so once you convert to JPEG you have permanently lost the ability to re-edit the background blur.
• Print-grade workflows with strict colour management. Use Photoshop's Export As (preserves ICC profile, supports soft-proofing and CMYK output), Affinity Photo, or RawTherapee. Canvas-based browser conversion may strip the embedded colour profile and tag the output as sRGB, which is fine for ordinary screen use but not for colour-managed print prep.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you store my photos on your servers?

No. All conversion happens 100% on your device in your browser. We never upload, store, or access your photos. Complete privacy guaranteed.

What quality should I use?

85% is recommended for most cases, providing excellent quality with smaller file sizes. Use 95-100% for print or professional use, and 70-80% for web/sharing.

Can I convert multiple files at once?

Yes. You can upload and convert multiple HEIC files at once. They'll be converted sequentially and you can download them individually or as a ZIP.

Does it work on mobile?

Yes. This tool works on iPhone, iPad, Android, and all modern browsers. You can convert photos directly on your mobile device.

Will the converted JPG look different?

At 85% quality or higher, the difference is imperceptible to the human eye. Lower quality settings reduce file size but may show some compression artifacts.

What if conversion fails?

Ensure your HEIC file is valid and not corrupted. Try downloading the file again from your iPhone. If issues persist, try a different browser.

More frequently asked questions

Why can't Chrome or Firefox open HEIC files directly?

HEIC uses the H.265 / HEVC codec, which is royalty-encumbered through several patent pools (MPEG LA, HEVC Advance, Velos Media, and others). Browser vendors that ship a native HEVC decoder must license those patents, and the per-installation cost makes it impractical to bundle HEVC into open-source web browsers. Safari can decode HEIC because it relies on the operating system's HEVC decoder (which Apple licenses for macOS and iOS). Chrome and Firefox sidestep the licensing question by simply not supporting HEIC. The workaround is what this tool does: ship a libheif WebAssembly decoder that runs inside the page, distributed under an LGPL licence that leaves the patent question to the deployer.

How can I stop my iPhone from saving photos as HEIC in the first place?

Open Settings, tap Camera, tap Formats, then select "Most Compatible." Your iPhone will save new photos as JPEG instead of HEIC from that point forward. The trade-off is that JPEG files are roughly twice the size of HEIC at equivalent quality, so each photo eats more space on the device and in iCloud. Many users keep the default HEIC setting for storage efficiency and convert on demand only when sharing with non-Apple recipients, which is exactly the workflow this tool supports.

Does this tool work offline?

After the first visit, yes. The heic2any and JSZip libraries (about 800 KB combined) are fetched once from the CDN on first load and cached by the browser. Subsequent visits work entirely offline, as long as the browser cache has not been cleared in the meantime. You can verify by enabling airplane mode after opening the page once and converting a local HEIC file.

Will the GPS location and other EXIF data be preserved?

Most of it, yes. Camera info (model, lens), exposure settings, capture date and time, GPS coordinates, and image orientation are preserved across the conversion. The ICC colour profile and Apple-specific extension blocks (depth maps, HDR gain maps, Live Photo references) may not survive. If you want to scrub GPS coordinates before sharing for privacy reasons, use a desktop EXIF editor (ExifTool, ImageOptim with "remove metadata" enabled) after this conversion, or strip metadata in Apple Photos before exporting.

Can I convert HEIC photos taken on a non-Apple device?

Yes. While HEIC originated with Apple, the format is an open ISO standard (ISO/IEC 23008-12) and other manufacturers have adopted it: some Samsung Galaxy phones save HEIC by default, certain Canon and Sony mirrorless cameras have HEIC modes, and various Android phones offer HEIC as an option. Any standards-compliant HEIC file decodes correctly through libheif regardless of where it was captured.

Is there a desktop or command-line equivalent?

Several. The most common: ImageMagick with libheif support (magick input.heic output.jpg) runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows once libheif is installed. The libheif project ships its own heif-convert binary for direct HEIF-to-JPEG conversion. On macOS, Preview can save HEIC as JPEG via File → Export, and Apple Photos' "Export Unmodified Original" workflow handles batches. On Windows, iMazing HEIC Converter is a free GUI option; CopyTrans HEIC adds Windows-wide HEIC viewing. For Node.js or server pipelines, sharp built on libvips supports HEIC input with the same libheif dependency.

Related Tools