How to Convert HEIC to JPG on Windows, Mac and iPhone

How do I convert HEIC to JPG?

Whatever device you are holding, the job comes down to the same five moves. Only the first one depends on the platform, because not every system can read a HEIC photo out of the box: a Mac can, Windows needs extra codecs first, and the browser route further down brings its own decoder.

1. Open the HEIC photo in something that can read it: Preview on a Mac, or the converter further down this page on Windows, ChromeOS, Android or an iPhone.
2. Pick JPEG as the output. In Preview that is the Format pop-up menu after File > Export; in the converter it is the JPG format, which this guide selects for you.
3. Set the quality. A high setting keeps fine detail such as hair, foliage and text intact; lower it only when the file has to fit a size limit.
4. Save the copy. Preview asks for a name and a folder; the converter gives every photo its own Download button, and one .zip once there is more than one photo.
5. Open the new .jpg where you need it before you delete anything. None of these routes changes the HEIC original, so keep it until the copy has done its job.

The sections below walk through each platform in detail, including the iPhone setting that stops HEIC from being produced in the first place, and what to do when the built-in route on your machine is not available.

How to convert HEIC to JPG on Windows

Windows does not open a .heic photo out of the box. Try it and the Photos app may answer with the message "You need an extension to use this file", because the picture inside a HEIC file is compressed with HEVC, a codec Windows leaves to a separate download. Microsoft's support page for that message lists three ways around it. The first one teaches Windows itself to read the photos:

1. Open the Microsoft Store and install HEIF Image Extensions, which is free.
2. Install HEVC Video Extensions from the Store as well. Microsoft lists it at $0.99 and is explicit that you need both, even if you only plan to use photos and never videos.
3. Restart the Photos app so it picks up the new codecs. Your .heic photos now open in Photos like any other picture.

Be clear about what that does and does not do: the photos now open, but they are still HEIC files, and anyone you send them to needs the same two extensions. Microsoft's second option skips the codecs altogether. Many phones convert HEIC photos to a more common format on the way to a PC, either when you plug the phone in and move the files across or when you email the photos to yourself and save them from the message. On an iPhone, whether that happens depends on one setting, covered in the iPhone section below, and Microsoft itself warns that you may need to change the phone's camera and photo settings before it works.

The third option is to upload the photos to OneDrive and let it convert them. That works, but it sends private pictures to a cloud service, which is a trade some people are happy to make and others are not.

If the .heic files are already on the PC, the phone is not at hand and you cannot or would rather not install anything, the converter further down this page is the direct route on Windows. It brings its own HEIC decoder, so it needs neither extension, and it runs in Edge, Chrome or Firefox, including on a work laptop where the Microsoft Store is blocked.

How to convert HEIC to JPG on a Mac

A Mac reads HEIC without any extra software, and Preview, the image viewer that comes with every Mac, writes a JPEG copy in a few clicks. Apple documents the exact route:

1. Open the HEIC photo in the Preview app.
2. Choose File > Export.
3. Open the Format pop-up menu and choose JPEG. A quality option appears; leave it near the top unless the file has to be small.
4. Type a new name or choose where to save the copy, then click Save.

To convert several photos in one pass, Apple's instructions are to open them in a single Preview window, select them in that window's sidebar and then follow the same steps. That makes the Mac the easiest platform for a batch: no extra software, and one export for the whole selection.

If the photos live in the Photos app rather than in a folder, select them there and choose File > Export > Export [number] Photos. Set the Photo Kind pop-up menu to JPEG, click the arrow beside it to adjust JPEG Quality and Size if needed, and export. Avoid File > Export > Export Unmodified Original in the same menu: it exports each photo in the format it was imported in, which for a photo shot on an iPhone set to High Efficiency means HEIC again.

How to get JPG photos from an iPhone

On an iPhone the real question is usually not how to convert one photo but how to stop getting HEIC at all. Since iOS 11, the iPhone 7 and every later model can capture photos as HEIF, and the camera keeps doing so for as long as it is set to High Efficiency. One setting changes that:

1. Open Settings and tap Camera.
2. Tap Formats.
3. Tap Most Compatible. From then on, the camera captures photos as JPEG and videos as H.264.

This only changes photos you take from now on; everything already in the library stays HEIC. It also gives up the storage saving on every future photo to solve a problem you may only meet now and then. Apple calls High Efficiency the space-saving option, and plenty of people leave the camera on it and convert only when they have to. Switching back is the same path, choosing High Efficiency instead.

A second setting decides what happens when photos leave the phone over a cable. Apple notes that HEIF media imported from an attached iPhone into Photos, Image Capture or a PC might be converted to JPEG on the way, and that choosing Keep Originals under Settings > Apps > Photos stops that conversion. So if your photos keep arriving on the computer as .heic files, open that screen and check that Keep Originals is not the selected option.

To convert photos that are already on the phone without involving a computer, open this page in Safari, tap the drop zone of the converter further down and pick the photos. The conversion runs on the iPhone itself, and each JPG, or one .zip holding all of them, downloads like any other file from Safari.

When the built-in routes fall short

For a single photo on a Mac, Preview is hard to beat: it is already installed and the whole job takes four clicks. Everywhere else, the built-in routes start to hurt in a few predictable situations.

The first is a missing codec. On Windows, nothing opens a HEIC until both Store extensions are installed, and one of them costs money. On a work laptop where the Microsoft Store is blocked, or a shared PC in a library or school, installing them is simply not an option, while a web browser always is.

The second is volume. Microsoft's routes for getting JPGs onto a PC run through the phone, by cable or by email, so they do nothing for a folder of .heic files that is already on the computer, and emailing a few hundred holiday photos to yourself is not a realistic plan. Preview handles a batch well, but only on a Mac.

The third is photos that never passed through your own iPhone: pictures a friend sent, files saved from a shared album, or a folder copied off an old backup. Changing the camera setting does nothing for those, because they were HEIC long before they reached you.

The fourth is privacy. Many online converters upload your photos to a server to do the work, which means a copy of every picture, often with its location still stored in the metadata, sits on someone else's machine for a while. The browser route below avoids all four problems: it needs no codec, takes a whole selection of photos in one drop, works on HEIC files from any source and never sends a file anywhere.

Convert HEIC to JPG on any device, in your browser

The converter below is the one route in this guide that does not depend on which computer or phone you are using. It decodes HEIC with its own decoder, which loads from this site only when the first HEIC photo arrives, so it needs no codec from Microsoft and no particular version of macOS. That also makes it the only route here that behaves the same on a Chromebook, an Android phone or a locked-down work laptop.

1. Drag your .heic files onto the drop zone of the converter just below, or click it (or focus it and press Enter) to pick them from your device. You can add several photos at once; they are converted one after another as soon as they arrive.
2. Make sure JPG is the selected output format. It is preselected here, and the quality slider starts at 90 percent unless you changed it on an earlier visit.
3. Press Download next to a photo to save that one JPG, or use Download all to get every converted photo in a single .zip file.
4. Open one of the JPGs to check it before you delete any originals. For the next batch, drop more files on the same drop zone.

Nothing leaves your device during any of this: the HEIC decoding and the JPG encoding both happen inside the browser tab, which you can confirm in the network panel of your browser's developer tools. The only thing downloaded is the decoder code itself, from this site, the first time you convert a HEIC file.

What changes in the converted file

A JPG made from a HEIC is a fresh encoding of the same pixels, not a renamed file. Changing the extension from .heic to .jpg by hand does not convert anything: the file keeps its HEIC contents, and most apps will either refuse it or show an error.

Expect the JPG to be larger than the HEIC it came from. The space saving is the whole reason an iPhone uses HEIC, so going the other way gives some of it back. How much depends on the photo and on the quality setting; no single ratio holds for every picture.

In terms of quality, the photo goes through a second round of lossy compression. At the default 90 percent the difference is very hard to spot; at low settings the two losses stack up and fine detail starts to smear. If you plan to edit the image afterwards, convert to PNG, which is lossless, and make the JPG only at the very end.

This converter builds the JPG from the decoded pixels alone, so EXIF metadata such as GPS coordinates, the capture date and the camera model is not carried over. That is usually welcome before a photo goes online. If you need the date or location for a photo archive, keep the original HEIC next to the JPG.