What Is HEIC, and How Do You Convert It to JPG?
2026-06-24
You email a photo from your iPhone and the recipient says it won't open. The culprit is almost always HEIC — the format iPhones have used by default since 2017. Here's what it is and how to make your photos open everywhere.
What HEIC actually is
HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) stores a photo using the HEVC compression standard. Its big advantage is efficiency: it holds the same quality as JPEG in roughly half the file size, so your phone fits twice as many photos. Apple adopted it with iOS 11 in 2017, and it's been the default ever since.
Why other devices can't open it
Efficiency comes at the cost of compatibility. Windows (without an add-on), many Android phones, older photo software, lots of websites and most printers simply don't understand HEIC. So a file that looks fine on your iPhone shows up as an error or a blank thumbnail elsewhere. JPG, by contrast, is decades old and opens literally everywhere.
Two ways to avoid the problem
First, you can change your iPhone to shoot JPG directly: Settings → Camera → Formats → "Most Compatible". This makes new photos JPG, though they'll take more space. Second — and better for photos you already have — convert them. Our HEIC to JPG converter decodes HEIC and saves a universal JPG, and because it runs entirely in your browser, your photos are never uploaded to a server.
After converting
The JPG may be a bit larger than the HEIC original, since JPEG is less efficient. If you need it smaller — for an email limit or a website — run it through our compressor or resize it first. A converted, compressed JPG opens everywhere and stays small.