Convert HEIC to JPG
HEIC is what an iPhone saves when "High Efficiency" is switched on, and it is the reason a photo that looks fine on the phone refuses to open on a work laptop. This converts it to JPG at full resolution. The interesting question is not whether the pixels survive — they do — but what happens to the parts of a HEIC file that JPG has no way to store.
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Add to Chrome — freeDrop your HEIC file here, or click to browse
Up to 50 MB. Deleted automatically after 30 minutes.
What it does
- Full original resolution, no downscaling
- Live Photos reduced to their still frame
- EXIF date and camera model preserved
- Depth and HDR gain maps dropped, and the page says so
How to use HEIC to JPG
- 1
Add the HEIC file
Drop in a photo straight from an iPhone or from an iCloud download. Files with a .heic or .heif extension both work — the container is the same and the extension is only a naming convention Apple applies inconsistently.
- 2
Confirm JPG as the output
JPG is preselected. It is the right default here because the whole reason to leave HEIC is compatibility, and JPG is the format with the fewest programs that refuse it.
- 3
Convert and download
The file is sent to our server, converted, and returned. It is deleted 30 minutes later. This one cannot run in your browser: no browser ships a HEIC encoder or decoder, because the format sits on patented HEVC.
How it works
The file is decoded with libheif, which is the reference implementation of the HEIF container, paired with a HEVC decoder for the image data itself. The decoded pixels are then encoded as JPEG at quality 82 — high enough that comparing the two side by side at 100% shows no visible difference on a normal photograph, low enough that the file does not balloon further than it already has.
That decode step is the whole reason this tool works differently from the rest of the site. A HEIC file is not really an image format in the way PNG is; it is a container that can hold one image, a burst of images, a depth map, an HDR gain map, and a thumbnail, all at once. Reading it means understanding the container first and then decoding whichever item inside it is the primary picture.
What a HEIC holds that a JPG cannot
This is the part most converters skip, and it is the part worth knowing before you delete the originals.
Depth maps. Photos taken in Portrait mode carry a per-pixel depth channel. It is what lets Photos change the simulated aperture after the fact. JPG has no concept of it, so the blur that was applied at capture time is baked in and the adjustment is gone.
HDR gain maps. Newer iPhones store an extra layer describing how much brighter parts of the image should render on a display capable of showing it. On an HDR screen the HEIC looks noticeably brighter and more dimensional than the JPG will. On a normal screen you will see no difference at all.
Bursts and multiple frames. A single HEIC can hold every frame of a burst. Only the primary image is converted.
Live Photo motion. Covered in the examples above, and the one people are most often surprised by.
None of this is recoverable from the JPG afterwards. If any of it matters, the right move is to convert a copy and keep the original.
When you should not convert
If the photos are going into long-term storage and everything that will ever read them is Apple hardware, converting is a downgrade: you lose the extra layers and roughly double the disk usage for no gain. Modern Windows can open HEIC once the HEVC extension is installed, and most photo software added support years ago.
The genuine reasons to convert are narrower than the volume of "HEIC to JPG" searches suggests: uploading to a site that rejects the format, sending to someone on older software, or feeding a tool whose image library predates 2017. For those cases JPG remains the format with the fewest refusals, which is the only real argument in its favor.
Examples
A standard 12-megapixel iPhone photo
Same pixel dimensions, roughly double the file size. That is the trade being made: HEIC's compression is genuinely better than JPEG's, so leaving it costs storage. Nothing is lost visually at this quality setting, but the file will never be as small as the original was.
A Live Photo
The motion is not converted, hidden, or recoverable afterwards. A Live Photo is a still image with a separate short video alongside it, and JPG has nowhere to put the video. If the moving version matters, export it from Photos as a video before converting the still.
Frequently asked questions
Why can this not run in my browser like your other image tools?
Because no browser ships a HEIC decoder. The format stores its image data as HEVC, which is patent-encumbered, and browser vendors have declined to license it for still images. Safari can display HEIC on Apple hardware by handing the file to the operating system, but that is macOS decoding it, not the browser, and it is not something a web page can call.
Does converting lose quality?
Slightly, and unavoidably, because JPEG is a lossy format. The conversion is done at a high quality setting where the difference is not visible at normal viewing sizes, but it is a real second generation of compression on top of whatever the camera already applied. If you are archiving rather than sharing, keep the HEIC original as well.
What happens to the photo's date and location?
EXIF survives: capture date, camera model, exposure settings, and GPS coordinates if the phone recorded them. Worth knowing in both directions — it means your photo library sorts correctly after conversion, and it also means a file you are about to email still says where it was taken.
Why is the JPG bigger than the HEIC I started with?
HEIC compresses better. For the same visual quality it typically produces a file around half the size of the equivalent JPEG, which is exactly why Apple adopted it. Converting trades that efficiency for the ability to open the file anywhere, so a larger file is the expected result rather than a sign something went wrong.