What is a HEIC file?
HEIC (or HEIF) is the photo format iPhones and iPads use by default since iOS 11. Apple chose it because it stores a photo of the same quality in roughly half the space of a JPG, which leaves more room on your phone.
The problem appears as soon as the photo leaves the Apple world. Many Windows computers, older Android phones, websites, administrative portals and printing services do not open HEIC files, or refuse them on upload. You end up with a file that looks fine on your iPhone but cannot be used anywhere else.
JPG, on the other hand, opens absolutely everywhere. Converting HEIC to JPG is the simplest way to share your iPhone photos without worrying.
How to convert HEIC to JPG on a computer
No software to install. Open this page in any recent browser on Windows, Mac, Linux or a Chromebook:
- Copy your HEIC photos from your iPhone to your computer (cable, AirDrop, iCloud or a USB stick).
- Drop them into the box above, or click to select them.
- Download the JPGs. With many photos, take the ZIP.
You can convert a whole album in one go. Plume keeps the photos the right way up and removes EXIF metadata by default, including the GPS location saved by the iPhone. That is a good thing when you send photos to people you do not know or post them online.
The converted JPGs are also compressed with the MozJPEG encoder, so they stay reasonably light.
Convert HEIC to JPG on iPhone
Plume also works in Safari on iPhone and iPad. Open the page, tap the box, choose your photos from the library and download the JPGs to the Files app.
A tip: when you choose photos in some apps or upload them to a website from Safari, iOS sometimes converts them to JPG on its own. It is not always the case, and you do not control the quality. Converting yourself gives you a predictable result.
Phones have less memory than computers, so for big albums it is easier to convert in several smaller batches.
Make your iPhone shoot in JPG instead of HEIC
If you would rather avoid HEIC entirely, you can change a setting on the iPhone:
- Open Settings, then Camera, then Formats.
- Choose Most Compatible instead of “High Efficiency”.
From then on, new photos are saved as JPG. Keep in mind that they will take about twice as much space on your phone. Photos you have already taken stay in HEIC, so you still need a converter for them.
Another useful setting: in Settings > Photos, the option “Transfer to Mac or PC” set to Automatic asks the iPhone to convert photos to JPG when you copy them with a cable. It does not apply to every transfer method.
Your photos never leave your device
Phone photos are personal: family, children, home, documents photographed in a hurry. Unlike most online tools that upload your files, Plume converts HEIC to JPG inside your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, and it even works offline once the page is loaded.
Free, with no account, no watermark and no limit on the number of photos. Prefer a more modern format? Plume can also turn HEIC into WebP or AVIF with the image converter, or simply reduce their size with Compress image.
Do I lose quality when converting HEIC to JPG?
JPG uses lossy compression, like HEIC. At the Balanced or High quality preset, the difference is not visible on a screen, and the photo stays perfectly fine for printing at usual sizes. The JPG will usually be a little heavier than the HEIC, because HEIC is the more efficient format.
A few things are not carried over: Live Photos become a single still image, and the depth information used for Portrait mode is not kept. For everyday sharing, sending and uploading, that changes nothing.