Convert HEIC to JPG
iPhone HEIC photos don't open on many devices: convert them to JPG or PNG, readable everywhere. Everything runs in your browser.
.heic or .heif files
Why the iPhone saves in HEIC
Since 2017 iPhones save photos as HEIC, a format that weighs about half of JPG at the same quality. The catch is compatibility: many Windows PCs, websites, apps and devices can't open it. Converting to JPG makes the photo readable truly everywhere.
Avoiding HEIC at the source
If you don't want to convert every time, on the iPhone go to Settings → Camera → Formats and choose Most Compatible: new photos will be saved directly as JPG.
What HEIC is, and why it exists
HEIC is a container using the same compression as H.265 video, applied to a still image. The result is that at the same quality it weighs about half a JPEG: on a phone with thousands of photos that is several gigabytes of difference, and it is why Apple adopted it as standard in 2017.
The format can do things JPEG cannot: it holds several images in a single file (that is how Live Photos and bursts work), it handles transparency and it supports the ten-bit colour of HDR. The problem is therefore not the format, it is that outside the Apple ecosystem few things open it.
Where HEIC will not open
The commonest case is the online form that only accepts JPG and PNG: an attachment for an application, a job submission, an advert. Then there are programs that have not been updated, many website content systems, older printers with a card reader, and televisions.
Windows from version 11 opens HEIC in the Photos app, but not every program installed on top does; on Android support depends on the version and the manufacturer. That is why conversion is still needed even when «the computer opens them»: what counts is whether the destination program opens them.
What changes in the conversion
The resulting JPEG weighs twice as much, and that is the trade-off to reckon with when converting five hundred photos at once. If the original was HDR, the dynamic range is squeezed into eight bits and some high-contrast scenes lose a little detail in the highlights.
The Live Photos lose the animated part and remain a single image, the one chosen as the key frame. And since the JPEG is generated afresh, it is worth keeping the HEIC original until you have checked that the result serves: converting is easy, going back is not.
How to stop having to do it
On the iPhone it is changed once and for all in Settings → Camera → Formats by choosing Most Compatible: from then on new photos are born as JPEG. The old ones stay HEIC, and this page is for those.
There is a second setting that often confuses, in Settings → Photos, at the bottom: it decides whether photos transferred to a computer are automatically converted to JPEG or passed in their original format. Anyone finding .heic files on their computer despite having the camera set to most compatible usually has that one set to «original».
Nearby tools
For other formats there is Convert image, for size Compress image and Compress to a target size. For dimensions Resize photo, and for the data hidden in phone photos Photo EXIF data and Remove metadata.