Does converting HEIC to JPG lose quality?

Converting re-encodes the image, so there's a tiny theoretical loss, but at a quality setting around 90 it's invisible to the eye. The more noticeable change is that the JPG will be a good deal larger than the HEIC it came from.

Why won't Windows open my HEIC files?

HEIC relies on HEVC, which carries licensing requirements Windows doesn't include by default. You can install an add-on, but converting to JPG sidesteps the whole problem.

Can I convert a JPG back into a HEIC?

You can, but it's rarely worth it — you won't recover the detail that was already discarded, and you'll just end up with a less compatible file.

How do I stop my iPhone from making HEIC in the first place?

Open Settings, go to Camera, then Formats, and choose Most Compatible. New photos will be saved as JPEG. Existing HEIC files still need converting.

What Is a HEIC File — and How to Convert It to JPG

You AirDrop a photo to a friend on Windows, upload one to a job application, or send it to a print shop — and it bounces. "Unsupported file type." Nine times out of ten the culprit is a file ending in .heic, and the phone that took it never warned you.

So what is a HEIC file?

HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Container. Apple switched to it as the default camera format back in iOS 11, in 2017, and iPhones have shot in it ever since. Under the hood it uses HEVC — the same compression family as H.265 video — which packs a photo into roughly half the space of an equivalent JPEG at similar quality. A shot that lands around 2 MB as HEIC would often be 4 MB or more as JPEG.

That's fantastic for your phone's storage. It's a headache the moment you try to use the photo anywhere that isn't a recent Apple device, because HEVC is patent-encumbered and support is patchy. Windows needs an add-on to preview it, plenty of upload forms reject it outright, and older editing software just shrugs.

When to convert — and when to leave it alone

You don't need to convert everything. It comes down to where the photo is going:

Convert to JPG when you're sending a photo to someone on Windows or Android, uploading to a website or form, printing, or opening it in older software.
Keep it as HEIC when the photo is just living on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. There's no benefit to bloating it, and you'd lose the storage saving.

JPG, PNG or WebP — which should you pick?

For everyday photos, JPG is the right answer: it opens literally everywhere. Choose PNG only if you need a lossless copy or transparency, and expect a much bigger file. WebP is the modern middle ground — small files, great quality — and it's ideal if the image is headed for a website, though a few older apps still don't read it.

How to convert HEIC to JPG

Open the HEIC to JPG Converter and drop your photos in. You can select a whole batch at once.
Choose JPG as the format, and set the quality slider — 90 is a good balance of size and sharpness.
Download each converted photo, or use Download all to grab the batch.

These are your personal photos, so it matters where they go: the conversion happens entirely on your device. Nothing is uploaded to a server, which is not something you can say for most "free online" HEIC converters.

Tools that just work