Someone sends you photos from an iPhone and your laptop shows a blank icon ending in .heic. Or you try to upload your own picture and the website says “unsupported file type”. The photo is fine. The format is the problem.
What HEIC is
HEIC is Apple’s name for a photo stored in the HEIF container with HEVC compression, the same family of compression used for 4K video. Apple made it the default camera format in iOS 11, back in 2017. The reason is storage: a HEIC photo takes roughly half the space of a JPG that looks the same. On a 128 GB phone, that’s thousands of extra pictures.
Why it won’t open everywhere
HEVC is covered by patents, so support costs money or effort. Windows needs an extension from the Microsoft Store. Plenty of web forms, older Android phones, printers at photo kiosks and older editing programs never added it. JPG, by contrast, has opened on everything since the 1990s.
Three ways to get a JPG
Convert the files you already have. Drop them into HEIC to JPG and download the JPGs. The conversion runs in your browser, so the photos stay on your device. If you need to keep fine edges for editing, HEIC to PNG saves without further loss, at a much bigger file size.
Let the iPhone convert when it shares. Open the Photos section of the Settings app, scroll to “Transfer to Mac or PC” and choose Automatic. Photos sent by cable are then handed over as JPG. Mail and many apps already convert on send.
Stop shooting HEIC. Settings, Camera, Formats, then Most Compatible. New photos are saved as JPG. You give up the space saving, so this suits people who move photos to a PC every week more than people who are always short of storage.
Does converting lose quality?
A little, and you won’t see it at normal sizes. JPG is lossy, so the converter throws away some detail to keep the file small. At a quality setting around 90 the result is hard to tell from the original. What you do lose is the extras some HEIC files carry: Live Photo motion and the depth map behind Portrait mode don’t fit in a JPG.
A folder full of them
For a whole trip’s worth, Bulk Image Converter takes the lot in one go and hands back a ZIP. Very large batches depend on your device’s memory, so on an older phone do a few dozen at a time.
Common questions
Is HEIC better than JPG?
It stores the same picture in about half the space and supports 10-bit color. JPG wins on one point: it opens everywhere.
Can Android phones open HEIC?
Most phones with Android 10 or newer can view it. Uploading it to a website is a separate matter and often fails.
Will the date and location survive the conversion?
That depends on the converter and its settings. Check the result with an EXIF viewer if you need them, or if you want them gone.