Why your photos are HEIC in the first place
Since iOS 11 in 2017, every iPhone saves photos in HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) by default. Apple chose it because HEIC stores the same photo in roughly half the file size of JPG, which matters when a camera roll holds ten thousand photos. Android phones, Windows PCs and most websites never followed: Windows still requires a paid HEVC extension to open HEIC files, and most upload forms simply reject them.
That mismatch is the entire reason this page exists: the photo is fine, the format is just ahead of what the rest of the internet accepts. Converting to JPG solves it permanently for that photo.
What happens to your photo during conversion
HEIC stores the image with HEVC video compression. Converting to JPG decodes those pixels and re-encodes them with JPEG compression. Two things change: the file becomes universally readable, and it typically grows. In our test set of iPhone 15 photos, a 1.8 MB HEIC became a 3 to 4 MB JPG at 90% quality, because JPG compression is simply less efficient than HEVC. The pixel dimensions stay identical, and the photo's orientation is preserved from its EXIF data.
Transparency is not a concern for photos (cameras do not produce transparent pixels), but if you convert a HEIC screenshot or graphic that contains transparency, JPG will flatten it onto a white background. Use HEIC to PNG when you need transparency preserved.
Why this converter does not upload your photos
Most HEIC converters upload your photos to their servers, convert them there, and keep the files for 1 to 48 hours before deletion. That is a real privacy exposure for family photos, documents and anything sensitive, and it is also slow: a 200-photo camera roll means uploading hundreds of megabytes before conversion even starts.
This tool works differently. Your browser downloads a small conversion engine (WebAssembly build of libheif, the open-source HEIF library), and your own device does the decoding. On Safari 17 and newer the browser's built-in Apple decoder is used instead, so nothing extra loads at all. Details are on our methodology page.
Common questions
Why won't websites accept my iPhone photos?+−
iPhones save photos as HEIC by default, and many websites, upload forms and older applications only accept JPG or PNG. Even ChatGPT and other AI chatbots reject HEIC uploads. Converting to JPG makes the photo universally accepted.
Will converting HEIC to JPG lose quality?+−
Slightly, by design: JPG is a lossy format. At the default 90% quality the difference is invisible in normal viewing. If you need a pixel-perfect copy, convert to PNG instead, which is lossless.
Is it safe to convert sensitive photos here?+−
Yes, and you can verify it rather than trust it. The conversion runs in your browser via WebAssembly. Load the page, turn off your internet connection, and it still converts. There is no upload, so there is no server copy, no retention window and nothing to delete.
Can I convert a whole camera roll at once?+−
Yes. Drop up to 200 HEIC photos and convert them in one batch, then download everything as a ZIP. On phones the queue is processed one photo at a time to stay inside device memory limits, so very large batches simply take a little longer.
Does this work on Windows?+−
Yes. Windows still cannot open HEIC files without a paid codec extension from the Microsoft Store, which is exactly why this tool exists. Open this page in any modern browser on Windows, drop the files in and download JPGs.