Convert JPG to HEIC
Nearly everyone arriving here is going the other way, and for good reason. This page exists for the narrow case where the destination is Apple's world and the saving is worth it — and it will spend most of its time explaining when that is not true.
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Add to Chrome — freeDrop your JPG file here, or click to browse
Up to 50 MB. Deleted automatically after 30 minutes.
What it does
- Roughly half the size of the JPEG at comparable quality
- Native format for iPhone, iPad and the Photos app
- Full 8-bit color, with no palette or dimension changes
- No watermark and no sign-up
How to use JPG to HEIC
- 1
Add the JPG
Photographs, ideally at their original size. This conversion is for photographic content; graphics and screenshots gain nothing from it.
- 2
Convert
The image is decoded and re-encoded with HEVC on our server. No browser can produce HEIC, so this cannot happen in the page.
- 3
Confirm the destination reads it
Apple devices and recent Windows and Android versions do. Older software, most web platforms and every browser do not. Check before you commit a library to it.
How it works
The JPEG is decoded to pixels and those pixels are re-encoded using HEVC, the video codec HEIC wraps, then written into an ISO base media container — the same container family as MP4.
That lineage explains both the efficiency and the trouble. HEVC had enormous engineering effort spent on it for video, which a still image inherits for free. It also carries the patent licensing that made browser vendors decline it, which is why a format this good is unreadable in the single most common piece of software on any computer.
The honest comparison
Against JPEG, HEIC wins clearly on size — roughly half, sometimes better — and supports transparency and higher bit depths that JPEG never had.
Against AVIF, it is a close technical contest that HEIC loses on availability.
AVIF compresses comparably, is royalty-free, and every current browser displays
it. If your reason for leaving JPEG is efficiency rather than Apple
compatibility, AVIF is the better destination and jpg-to-avif is the page you
want.
Against staying put, JPEG's argument is that it opens in literally everything written in the last thirty years. That is not a small feature.
When this conversion is right
A personal library on Apple hardware. Photos, iCloud, iPhone, iPad, Mac. Everything reads it and the storage saving compounds across thousands of images.
Matching what the camera already produces. If most of your library is already HEIC because the phone wrote it that way, converting stragglers keeps one format throughout.
When it is wrong
Anything going on the web. No browser displays HEIC. Use WebP or AVIF.
Anything you send to someone. A HEIC attachment is a support request from a recipient on Windows or Android.
Archiving. A format tied to active patent licensing and one vendor's platform is a poor bet for files meant to outlive both.
Images that are not photographs. Screenshots, diagrams and line art gain almost nothing and belong in PNG.
The round trip you cannot undo
Converting JPEG to HEIC and back to JPEG leaves you worse off than never converting: two lossy encodes instead of one, for no benefit. If you convert a library and later need JPEGs again, the honest position is that the originals were the good copy. Keep them until you are certain.
Examples
A photograph for an iPhone library
About half the size at visually the same quality, which is exactly what HEIC is for and why Apple made it the camera default. Across a library of several thousand photographs that is a meaningful amount of storage.
A screenshot with text and flat color
Almost no saving, and now it opens in fewer places. HEVC is tuned for photographic detail, not for flat regions and sharp type — and the JPEG had already damaged the text edges, which this conversion faithfully preserves. PNG was the right answer two steps ago.
Frequently asked questions
Is there any point converting a JPG to HEIC?
Only for storage inside a compatible ecosystem. You get roughly half the file size, and you lose the ability to open the file almost everywhere else. If the photographs live on Apple devices and stay there, the saving is real; if they are shared, published or archived, converting away from JPEG costs more than it returns.
Does the image get better?
No, and it cannot. The JPEG already discarded detail permanently when it was created, and re-encoding stores what remains more efficiently — it never restores what is gone. You are also compressing a second time, so a small amount of additional quality is lost, which is the usual cost of any lossy round trip.
Why does my HEIC not open on Windows?
Windows can read HEIC but does not always ship the decoder. Support arrives through the HEVC codec extensions in the Microsoft Store, which have historically been a paid item because of the patent licensing on HEVC — the same licensing that kept the format out of browsers entirely.
What about Live Photos and depth data?
Those cannot be created here. A Live Photo is a still paired with a short video, and portrait depth maps are extra layers written by the camera at capture time. A JPEG contains none of that, so converting produces an ordinary single-image HEIC. The container supports those features; your source does not have them to carry.