Convert HEIC to JPG on Windows and Mac
Your iPhone's .heic files stay unreadable for plenty of software and upload portals. Here is how to get clean JPGs, with orientation and colours intact.
You plug the iPhone into the PC, copy the photos across, and then nothing works when you actually try to use them: the photo-printing site rejects the file, Word shows an empty frame, the person you emailed replies that all they can see is an attachment that will not open. The culprit is four letters long, .heic, and it is not going to sort itself out.
Why an iPhone photo ends up with a .heic extension
Since iOS 11, Apple's camera has saved by default into a HEIF container, whose extension is .heic (you will also come across .heif). The image inside is compressed with HEVC, the same codec as H.265 video. The saving is real: a 12-megapixel photo is typically 1.5 to 2.5 MB as HEIC, against 4 to 6 MB for the same shot exported as JPEG at quality 90. The format also takes 10 bits per channel where JPEG stops at 8, handles transparency, and can stack several images inside a single file.
The obstacle is not technical, it is legal and logistical: HEVC is covered by patents, which means a great many programs, printers, CMS platforms and government upload portals simply do not decode it. JPEG, by contrast, has gone everywhere for thirty years. Hence the conversion — bearing in mind that at equivalent visual quality, the JPEG you end up with will be roughly twice the size of the original HEIC.
The method that works on any device
If you would rather not install anything, or find out the hard way that your PC cannot decode HEVC, the shortest route is the HEIC to JPG converter: drop the files in, get JPGs back. It accepts .heic and .heif alike, and the size limit per file is stated on the tool page itself — 50 MB as things stand, well beyond the size of any photo, even at 48 megapixels. The conversion runs on the server and uploaded files are deleted after an hour.
Two things worth knowing while you are here. Renaming a .heic to .jpg converts nothing: the extension is a label, not an encoding, and whatever software opens the file will still find HEVC inside. And if a .heic stubbornly refuses to open, check first that you actually have the original: with iCloud Photos' "Optimise iPhone Storage" switched on, the phone only keeps a lightweight version locally, and exporting too early produces an incomplete file.
On Windows: what the system can do, and what it cannot
The HEIF and HEVC extensions
On Windows 10 and 11, the Photos app will only display a .heic if the HEIF image extensions are installed, and the actual decoding depends on a separate HEVC extension distributed through the Microsoft Store. Depending on who made the PC, it comes preinstalled, costs money, or is unavailable. Once it is in place, you can open the photo in Paint and use File → Save as → JPEG. That is acceptable for one image, tedious for fifty, and Paint flattens the colour profile without warning.
Fixing the problem before the transfer
Two settings on the iPhone save you converting after the fact:
- Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC → Automatic: iOS converts the photos to JPEG during the USB transfer. Left on "Keep Originals", you get raw .heic files.
- Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible: photos from then on are saved straight to JPEG, and videos to H.264. It does nothing to the existing camera roll, and the phone's storage will fill up roughly twice as fast.
On a Mac: three methods depending on how many photos
One or two images — Preview
Open the file, then File → Export, pick JPEG as the format and set the Quality slider. Preview reads HEIC natively, with nothing to install.
A selection in Photos
File → Export → Export N Photos gives you control over the file type (JPEG), the quality, the pixel dimensions and the embedded metadata. It is also where you set the naming of the exported files, which spares you forty IMG_4312.jpg files that are impossible to sort.
A whole folder — Quick Actions
In the Finder, select the files, then right-click → Quick Actions → Convert Image. macOS offers a JPEG format, an output size, and a tick box for keeping or dropping the metadata. For something you do regularly, an Automator action called "Change Type of Images" does the same job by drag and drop.
The traps to know about before running a batch
- Orientation. Which way up a photo goes is stored in an EXIF tag, not in the pixels. A converter that misreads it produces sideways images. Always test a shot taken in portrait before putting three hundred through.
- Live Photos. The .heic holds only the still image; the movement lives in a twin .mov. Going to JPG freezes the photo, for good.
- Colours that drift. An iPhone HEIC is often Display P3 at 10 bits. Pulled down to 8-bit JPEG with no profile conversion, a red or a saturated sky comes out oversaturated, almost fluorescent; a proper P3 → sRGB conversion, by contrast, clips those same tones slightly. For anything going on the web, ask for sRGB explicitly.
- Bursts and sequences. A single .heic can hold several images; almost every converter exports only the primary one, and the rest are lost.
- GPS coordinates. They stay in the JPG's EXIF by default. Before publishing a photo taken at home, export without metadata.
Which JPEG quality to ask for
| Quality | Use | Typical file size (12 Mpx) |
|---|---|---|
| 90 to 95 | Archiving, editing later | 4 to 6 MB |
| 80 to 85 | Everyday use, printing | 1.5 to 2.5 MB |
| 70 to 75 | Web, email attachment | 700 KB to 1.2 MB |
| below 60 | Best avoided | Visible blocking in gradients |
One rule holds at every level: JPEG loses information every time it is saved. Convert once from the HEIC, then work on that file — do not re-save a JPEG as a JPEG over and over, because the artefacts pile up.
After the conversion: shrink, resize, bundle
Two hundred photos exported at JPEG quality 90 quickly add up to nearly a gigabyte on disk. Three sensible next steps, depending on what you need:
- For a website, a blog or an email, put the JPGs through the image compressor: a JPG that came out of a HEIC often shrinks a long way with no degradation you can see on screen.
- For publishing or printing, resolution matters more than compression. A 6 × 4in print at 300 dpi needs around 1800 × 1200 px, whereas a web page is happy with 1600 px across: resizing the image before compressing it gives a far better result than the other way round.
- For a receipt, an expenses claim or a form you have to upload, merging the JPGs into a single PDF saves sending ten separate attachments.
The HEIC converter runs on the server: one free conversion every day, no sign-up. If you have several hundred photos to get off an iPhone, the €7-a-year subscription lifts the limit across every server-side tool.