Convert
Convert HEIC to JPG
Convert the HEIC photos your iPhone produces into JPGs that everything can open. Whole albums at once, the right way up, and with the embedded location data left behind.
Output
Why your iPhone makes files nothing can open
Since iOS 11, iPhones have saved photos as HEIC by default. It is a genuinely better format: the same picture in roughly half the space of a JPEG, so more photos fit on the phone and iCloud backups are smaller.
The problem is everywhere else. HEIC uses the HEVC video codec, which carries patent licensing that most software vendors declined to pay for. So Windows shows a grey box, marketplace upload forms reject the file, older photo editors cannot open it, and emailing one to somebody on Android produces a confused reply. The picture is fine — the container is the problem.
How this converts without uploading anything
Because no browser outside Apple's platforms can decode HEIC natively, this tool loads libheif — the same open-source decoder most native HEIC viewers use — compiled to WebAssembly and running inside your browser. It decodes the picture on your device and re-encodes it as a JPEG.
That decoder is around three megabytes, which is why the very first photo takes a few seconds longer than the rest. It downloads once and is then cached, so subsequent files and subsequent visits are fast. Nothing is transmitted at any point.
Your photos will not come out sideways
Phones do not rotate the pixels they capture. The camera sensor has a fixed orientation, so a photo taken in portrait is stored landscape with a tag saying "display this rotated 90 degrees". Software that reads the tag shows it correctly; software that ignores it shows it on its side.
A great many online converters ignore it, which is why "my converted photos are all sideways" is such a common complaint. This tool reads the orientation and bakes the rotation into the output pixels, so the JPG is upright in every program, including ones that never look at metadata.
What happens to the location data
A HEIC photo taken on a phone with location services enabled records where you were, usually to within a few metres, along with the exact date and time, the camera model and the settings used.
Converting here does not carry any of that across. The decoder produces raw pixels and a fresh JPEG is written from them, so the output contains the image and nothing else. For most people converting phone photos to share or upload, that is exactly the right outcome — but if you need the original capture data for your records, keep the HEIC file as well.
If you want to see what your photos are currently revealing before you share anything, the EXIF viewer shows you the full contents of a file, including a map link for any GPS coordinates it finds.
How to stop your iPhone making HEIC files
If this is a recurring annoyance rather than a one-off, change the setting rather than converting forever:
- Open Settings on your iPhone.
- Tap Camera, then Formats.
- Choose Most Compatible.
New photos will be saved as JPEG from that point on. Photos already on the phone stay as HEIC, which is what this tool is for. The trade-off is that JPEGs take up roughly twice the space.
There is also a partial workaround when sharing: in Settings, Photos, under Transfer to Mac or PC, choosing Automatic converts to JPEG on export. It does not apply to every sharing route, so it is less reliable than changing the capture format.
How to convert HEIC to JPG
- Drop your .heic or .heif files onto the box above. You can select a whole album at once.
- Choose a JPEG quality, or set a target file size if you have a limit to meet.
- Wait for the conversion. The decoder loads on first use, so the first file takes a moment longer.
- Download the JPGs individually or all together as a ZIP.
Limits worth knowing
Every tool has boundaries. These are this one's, stated plainly so you do not waste time discovering them yourself.
- The HEIC decoder is a large WebAssembly module, around three megabytes. It downloads once on first use and is then cached.
- Camera details, timestamps and GPS coordinates are not carried into the JPG. For most people converting phone photos that is the desired outcome, but if you need the original capture data, keep the HEIC file too.
- Live Photos convert as the still frame only. The attached video is not extracted.
- A few HEIC files use encoding features the decoder does not cover. If a file fails, opening it on a Mac and exporting to JPG will always work.
- Depth maps and portrait-mode blur data are not preserved, since JPG has nowhere to store them.