HEIC vs JPG: what changes
HEIC is the photo format iPhones and iPads have used by default since iOS 11. It is built on the HEVC video codec and keeps a photo in roughly half the space of a JPG, which is why your camera roll fits so many pictures. Outside Apple's own apps it is a poor traveler: Windows needs extra codec add-ons from the Microsoft Store, and many websites, printers and forms simply reject .heic files.
The JPG is encoded at 92% quality, so it looks the same on screen but is usually about twice the size. JPG has no alpha channel, so any transparent area is painted white, and only the main photo is converted, not the short video clip stored with a Live Photo.
How to convert HEIC to JPG on any device
Photos that will not upload
Job applications, marketplace listings and insurance claims often accept only JPG or PNG. Drop the HEIC photos here and send the JPG files instead, one at a time or as a single ZIP.
Moving iPhone photos to a Windows PC
Connect the phone, copy the pictures over, then drag the .heic files onto this page. You get ordinary JPG files that open in any viewer without installing a codec.
Converting on the iPhone itself
Tap Choose images, pick the photos from your library and save the JPG files to Files or share them straight on. To stop making HEIC at the source, set Settings, Camera, Formats to Most Compatible.
Troubleshooting HEIC to JPG
The first photo takes a few seconds
Most browsers other than Safari cannot read HEIC themselves, so the page downloads a decoder of under a megabyte the first time you drop one. It is cached afterwards, and Safari can skip the download when it opens the photo natively.
The colors look a little flatter than on my iPhone
iPhone photos use the wide Display P3 color range, and a standard JPG is built for sRGB, so the most saturated reds and greens are toned down. The picture is the same, just inside the narrower range most screens use.
My Live Photo came out as a still
A Live Photo is a photo plus a short video. The converter turns the photo into a JPG and leaves the motion behind, which is what most upload forms expect anyway.
Color profile and metadata
Metadata is not copied to the JPG, including the date, camera settings and GPS location, so the file is safe to post publicly. Rotation stored in the HEIC is applied, so portrait photos stay upright in any app. HDR and Display P3 colors are mapped to standard sRGB.