How to convert iPhone HEIC photos to JPG without uploading them

HEIC (and the closely related HEIF) is a still-image file that uses a modern video-style compressor. Apple switched the camera default to it because a HEIC of a scene is often about half the size of a JPEG of similar looking quality, which matters when a phone holds years of pictures. Android phones that offer “high efficiency” pictures are in the same family. The savings are real. The compatibility cost shows up later, on a computer that has no HEIC codec, in an email program that shows a generic icon, and on a website whose upload list says JPG, PNG, and sometimes WebP.

QuickConvert’s compress, convert, and resize tools still read only JPG, PNG, and WebP, because those are the formats the browser canvas can encode everywhere. HEIC needs a decoder. The HEIC to JPG page includes one and runs it in the tab. The other image tools were not quietly changed to accept HEIC, so a photo you drop on Image Compress is still refused until it is a JPG.

You can also change the phone for next time. On an iPhone, Settings, Camera, Formats, Most Compatible makes new photos JPEG. That does not rewrite the photos you already took. Those still need a conversion if a recipient cannot open them.

You drop a file whose name ends in .heic or .heif. The page decodes it with a browser build of the libheif family of code, draws the pixels, and encodes a JPEG at the quality you set. The slider starts at 90 and runs from 50 to 95. Ninety is the right first try. The HEIC was already lossy. A JPEG at 90 adds a small second loss that is hard to see on a photograph at normal size. Dropping toward 50 is for a file that must be tiny, and you should look at faces and any text in the picture before you keep that copy.

One photo downloads as the same base name with .jpg on the end. IMG_2045.HEIC becomes IMG_2045.jpg. The file on disk is not overwritten, because the browser saves a new download. Several photos are packed in the page with JSZip and saved as heic-images.zip. Unzip that on your computer. A phone may put the zip in Files rather than in Photos. The website cannot place images in the camera roll for you.

Some HEIC files hold more than one still image. A burst can. The page writes each still it can decode, numbered from the original name, and puts them in the zip even if you dropped only one file. A Live Photo’s motion clip is not exported. You get the stills. If you needed the video, export that from the Photos app, which is a different file.

Each source must be 40 MB or smaller. The decoder holds the picture in the tab’s memory. A larger file is refused up front. Export a smaller copy from the phone, or convert it on a computer with more memory, rather than watching the tab die halfway.

1. If you are on the iPhone and the form is also on the iPhone, try the form first. The photo picker sometimes hands a website a JPEG already. If the form still complains, continue here.
2. Open HEIC to JPG. Drop the photos, or pick them from Files. A batch is fine.
3. Leave quality at 90. Convert and download.
4. Open one JPG. Check a face and any small text. If it looks clean and the file is still too big for the form, run the JPG through Image Compress, not the HEIC again.
5. Keep the HEIC until you know the JPG is the one you wanted. Conversion does not delete it, but a download can land in a folder you do not watch.

If the destination wanted PNG, convert the JPG with Image Convert. Going HEIC to PNG directly is not what this page does, and a PNG of a photograph is usually much larger than the JPG, which is the wrong direction when the problem was file size.

A renamed file will not fool the decoder. Changing photo.jpg to photo.heic, or the reverse, changes the name only. If the bytes are not HEIC, the page says it could not read them.

The JPG is a new file made from pixels. Do not assume it still contains the GPS coordinates, the camera model, or the timestamp the phone stored beside the HEIC. Often that side data does not come along, which is what you want before you post a picture of a house or a child, and not what you want if you were relying on the date for an archive. Open the JPG’s info on your device and look. The page does not show you a metadata report, because it does not promise to copy or to strip those fields. It promises a picture.

Colour and orientation follow the decoded bitmap. A photo that was stored rotated should come out upright if the decoder applies the orientation. If a result is sideways, rotate the JPG in the Photos app. Do not run it through HEIC to JPG again. It is no longer a HEIC.

The bytes are read in the browser and the JPG is built there. There is no QuickConvert server that receives the photo, and there is no account that could store it. Close the tab and the working copy is gone. The first load of the page needs a network. After that, a conversion can finish offline. Hosting logs can still record that a browser asked for the page, and the public site may load analytics and an ad in the article. Those requests are not the photo. The longer version of that split is privacy with online file tools.

Can I convert a whole camera roll?

Drop the set you actually need to send. A zip of hundreds of full-size photos can exhaust a phone’s memory even though nothing is uploaded. Convert the ones a form or a person is waiting on, on a computer if the set is large.

The site said the file is already a JPEG.

Some share sheets transcode before the file reaches the page. Use that JPEG. You do not need this tool for it. If it is still too big, use Image Compress.

Does quality 90 match the HEIC?

It does not mathematically match it. It is a high JPEG quality, which is the honest description. Keep the HEIC as the archive and treat the JPG as the copy you send.

Will this work in every browser?

It needs a current Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari with enough memory for the photo. If one browser fails on a file that another opens, the file was still not uploaded. Try the second browser, or export a JPG from the phone’s own share sheet and skip this page.

When the photos are ready, open HEIC to JPG.