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HEIC to JPG Converter
Drop your .heic file here
or click to browse
No file size limit · Processed in your browser
How to Convert HEIC to JPG
- 1Click 'Choose File' or drag your HEIC photo into the drop zone
- 2The HEIC decoder loads in your browser (first time only, ~1.5MB)
- 3Click 'Download JPG' to save your converted photo
In 2017, Apple switched the iPhone's default photo format from JPG to HEIC with the release of iOS 11. The motivation was storage: HEIC files are roughly half the size of equivalent JPGs at the same visual quality, which meant iPhone users could store twice as many photos in the same space. For a device where storage is a premium and photos are the primary use case, this was a meaningful improvement. Apple also adopted the related HEVC video codec for iPhone video, completing the shift to a more efficient media stack.
The problem is that HEIC is based on the HEVC (H.265) video codec, and HEVC decoding requires a license. Apple licenses the codec for its own devices. Microsoft does not include the decoder in Windows by default — they sell it separately as the 'HEVC Video Extensions' add-on in the Microsoft Store for a small fee. The result: a photo taken on an iPhone and transferred to a Windows PC is simply unreadable without either paying for the extension or converting the file. Android has the same problem. Most web services, social media platforms, and email clients either reject HEIC uploads or silently convert them on their servers.
This converter decodes HEIC files using a WebAssembly build of an open-source HEIC library, running entirely in your browser. WebAssembly allows code originally written in C or C++ to execute in a browser at near-native speed, without any plugins or installations. Your iPhone photo is decoded in your browser's memory, drawn to a Canvas, and exported as a JPG — the whole process happens on your device, with no data sent to any server. The first conversion in a session takes a few seconds to load the decoder library (~1.5MB); subsequent conversions in the same session are immediate.
If you want to stop this problem at the source rather than converting after the fact, there is an iPhone setting for it: Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible. This makes your iPhone save photos as JPG instead of HEIC going forward. Your existing HEIC photos remain as-is and will still need conversion, but new photos will be universally compatible. The tradeoff is roughly double the storage usage per photo.