Convert HEIC to JPG

How to convert HEIC to JPG

1. Drop your HEIC files into the box above, or click to browse. You can also paste with Ctrl+V.
2. Adjust quality or resizing under Conversion settings if you need to. The defaults suit most photos.
3. Conversion starts automatically and runs on your device — watch the progress bar for each file.
4. Download files individually, or grab everything as a ZIP.

What changes when you convert HEIC to JPG

HEIC and JPG both throw information away, but they do it with completely different machinery. HEIC stores an image as HEVC intra-frame data — the same compression used for video keyframes — which is why a 12-megapixel iPhone photo lands around 2 MB. JPEG uses a discrete cosine transform designed in 1992, and at comparable visual quality it needs roughly two to three times the bytes.

The practical consequence is that converting HEIC to JPG almost always makes the file bigger, not smaller. In the measurement above, a 2.1 MB HEIC becomes a 2.5 MB JPG at quality 82 and a 6.6 MB JPG at quality 95. People expect the opposite, and it surprises them.

The second consequence is generational loss. The HEIC has already been compressed once by the camera; encoding a JPG from it compresses a second time, on top of artefacts that are already present. At quality 82 and above this is invisible on screen, which is why that is the default here. Below about quality 70 the two generations start to compound visibly in skies, skin tones and other smooth gradients.

What survives cleanly is metadata. EXIF — camera, lens, shutter, ISO, date, and GPS if location services were on — is carried across. If you are about to share the photo publicly, that GPS tag is worth thinking about: it records where the picture was taken to within a few metres. Turn off "Keep EXIF metadata" in the settings above to strip it during conversion.

What does not survive is everything Apple layers on top of the base image. HDR gain maps, depth maps and portrait segmentation are HEIC container extras with no JPEG equivalent, so a portrait-mode photo converts to a flat image with the blur already baked in as the camera rendered it — you lose the ability to re-edit the depth effect afterwards.

What is preserved

• Full pixel dimensions and orientation (the EXIF rotation flag is applied, not just copied)
• EXIF metadata: camera model, lens, exposure, capture date and GPS coordinates
• The display-referred sRGB rendering of the image

What is lost

• HDR gain maps — the extra layer iPhones use to brighten highlights on HDR displays
• Depth maps and portrait-mode segmentation data
• Live Photo motion (the paired video track is a separate file and is not part of the still)
• Burst and Live Photo alternate frames: only the primary image is converted
• 10-bit colour depth, reduced to 8-bit — JPEG has no 10-bit mode

What is altered

• Transparency, where present in a HEIF alpha channel, is composited onto the background colour you choose
• The image is re-encoded, so it goes through a second generation of lossy compression

JPG support in browsers and operating systems

Checked on 2026-08-09. We re-verify this table every quarter.

When not to convert HEIC to JPG

Do not convert if the destination already reads HEIC. Safari 17+, macOS High Sierra and later, iOS 11+ and Android 10+ all open these files natively, and converting only costs you file size and one generation of quality.

If your goal is a smaller file rather than a compatible one, this is the wrong tool: JPG will be larger than the HEIC you started with. Compress the image instead, or convert to WebP or AVIF, both of which beat JPEG at equal quality and are supported by every current browser.

If you need transparency, use PNG instead — JPEG has no alpha channel at all, and any transparent area will be filled with a solid colour.

If the photo is destined for print or further editing, convert to TIFF or PNG rather than JPG. Both are lossless, so the second generation of compression described above never happens.

Frequently asked questions