Convert HEIC to WebP
This is the conversion for publishing rather than for sharing. If a photo is going onto a web page, WebP is the format that keeps the file small and still renders in every browser — which is precisely the combination HEIC fails to offer despite being the better codec.
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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
- Comparable file sizes to the HEIC, with universal browser support
- Handles the HEIF variants iPhones and Android phones both produce
- Full color depth retained, unlike a conversion through JPEG
- No watermark and no sign-up
How to use HEIC to WebP
- 1
Add the HEIC
Straight from a phone, or from a photo library export. Files with a .heif extension work identically — the difference is naming, not content.
- 2
Convert
The image is decoded and re-encoded as WebP on our server. No browser can decode HEIC, so this genuinely cannot be done in the page.
- 3
Use it on the page
Serve the WebP directly. Every browser released in the last several years displays it, so the fallback markup that WebP once required is no longer worth writing.
How it works
The HEIC is decoded by ImageMagick, which reads the HEVC bitstream inside the container, and the resulting pixels are encoded as WebP.
The decode is the part that requires a server. The image libraries most tools are built on ship a HEIF reader without an HEVC decoder — the container opens, the metadata reads correctly, and the actual decode fails partway through. Getting a HEIC open reliably means a build with the video codec present, which no browser has and which is why this page uploads.
When this is the right conversion
The deciding question is what opens the file next.
A web page. WebP, without hesitation. It is what the format was built for.
Someone else's computer or phone. JPEG. It is worse in every technical respect and it opens in things that predate the web as a delivery platform, which is what "send me that photo" actually requires.
An editor, with more work planned. Neither. Keep the HEIC, or convert to something lossless, because each lossy round trip is a small permanent cost and editing invites several.
Page weight is about dimensions first
The largest saving available here is usually not the codec at all.
A phone photo is around 4000 pixels wide. A full-width image in a typical layout displays at perhaps 1200, and at twice that for high-density screens. Serving the original means sending several times more data than any visitor can see, and no choice of format recovers that — a 4000-pixel WebP is still a large file.
Resize to the width the layout actually uses, then convert. Doing it in that order is where the real reduction comes from; the format choice is the smaller second effect.
Transparency and the odd cases
WebP supports an alpha channel, so a HEIC carrying transparency keeps it. Photos from a camera never do, but images composited on a phone sometimes can.
Live Photos are a different matter. The still frame converts and the motion does not, because there is nowhere in a WebP to put a video. Depth maps and portrait masks are dropped for the same reason — they are extra layers in the HEIF container with no equivalent in a flat image format. What comes back is the photograph as displayed, which is nearly always what was wanted.
Examples
A photo headed for a blog post
Roughly the same size at the same dimensions, because both formats are modern lossy codecs doing similar work. The gain is not compression, it is that the file now displays. Resize before uploading if this is a page image — four thousand pixels wide is far past what any layout uses.
A screenshot-style image with text
Flat color and sharp edges are where WebP's lossless mode wins outright, and where a lossy conversion would smear the text edges. Images that are mostly type or interface belong in lossless; photographs do not.
Frequently asked questions
Why can browsers not just display HEIC?
Because of the codec inside it. HEIC wraps HEVC video compression, which carries an active patent-licensing regime that made shipping a decoder expensive for browser vendors. WebP and AVIF were both designed to avoid exactly that, which is why they became web formats and the technically comparable HEIC did not.
Does converting lose quality?
A little, unavoidably. Both formats are lossy, so decoding one and encoding the other means a second round of compression on an image that already went through one — generation loss, the same effect as re-saving a JPEG. It is not visible at normal quality settings on a normal photograph, but it is real, and repeating the round trip compounds it.
Should I use WebP or AVIF for the web?
AVIF compresses better, often noticeably so on photographs, and browser support is now broad enough to rely on. WebP is the safer default when you cannot control what will open the file, and it encodes far faster. For a photo gallery where page weight is the concern, AVIF is worth the extra step.
What happens to the photo's date and location?
Camera settings and the capture timestamp are carried into the WebP's metadata, and GPS coordinates come with them by default. That is worth knowing before publishing a photo taken at home — an image on a public page can carry the exact location it was taken, and stripping metadata is a deliberate step, not an automatic one.
Further reading
- Why HEIC Photos Fail to Open, and What to Convert Them ToHEIC is not a damaged version of JPEG. It is a newer image container with a more efficient codec, and the reason it fails is usually the software around the photo rather than the photo itself. The right conversion depends on what needs to open it next.
- Choose an Image Format by Content, Not by What the File Is ForAdvice about image formats is usually organized by purpose — logos, photos, screenshots, icons. That works until you meet a logo that is a photograph or a screenshot of a video. A better question predicts the right answer in every case we measured, and it takes about two seconds to ask.