Convert HEIC to JPG

Why your iPhone photos are HEIC files

Since iOS 11, iPhones and iPads have saved photos as HEIC by default instead of JPEG. The format stores an image at roughly half the file size for comparable quality, which is why Apple switched: it doubles how many photos fit on a device.

The catch is support. HEIC relies on HEVC compression, which is patent-encumbered, so a great deal of software never implemented it. Your photo is not corrupted — the program you are opening it in simply cannot read the format.

Why convert HEIC to JPG?

JPG is the safest possible destination for a photo. Every operating system, every browser, every printing service and every job-application portal built in the last thirty years can read one — which is precisely what HEIC cannot promise.

If something rejected your photo, asked for a “JPEG”, or showed a broken thumbnail, JPG is the format that makes the problem go away.

How to stop your iPhone taking HEIC photos

If you keep running into this, you can change the format the camera saves in. This affects new photos only — existing HEIC files stay as they are, so you will still need to convert those.

1. Open Settings on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Tap Camera, then Formats.
3. Choose Most Compatible. The camera will save JPEG from now on.

There is a related setting under Settings › Photos › Transfer to Mac or PC. Set it to Automatic and iOS converts photos to JPEG as it transfers them.

Does converting HEIC to JPG lose quality?

Slightly, in theory. HEIC and JPG are both lossy formats, so re-encoding means the image is compressed a second time. In practice, at the default quality setting the difference is invisible at normal viewing sizes — you would need to pixel-peep a heavily compressed area to spot it.

The quality slider gives you the trade-off directly: higher values keep more detail and produce a larger file. If the photo is going to print or archive, push it up. For email or a web upload, the default is already generous.

Expect the JPG to be noticeably larger than the HEIC. That is not a bug — HEIC simply compresses far more efficiently, which is why Apple adopted it.

What happens to Live Photos, depth and HDR data

A single HEIC file can hold far more than one image: the frames of a Live Photo, a depth map from Portrait mode, an HDR gain map, and several alternative renderings. Standard image formats have nowhere to put any of that.

Converting extracts the main photograph — the picture you actually see — and writes it as JPG. The motion, depth and HDR layers are left behind, and the originals on your device are untouched, so nothing is lost from your library.

Converting without uploading your photos

Nearly every HEIC converter on the web uploads your photos to a server, converts them there, and sends them back. Your camera roll is unusually personal — photos carry faces, locations and timestamps — and once a file is on someone else's server you are trusting their retention policy.

Morphixel does the conversion inside your browser instead. The decoder runs on your own device, so the photo never travels anywhere. You can verify this: open your browser's network tab, convert a photo, and watch that no upload occurs. Once the page has loaded you can even disconnect from the internet entirely and it still works.