Step-by-Step: Convert HEIC iPhone Photos to JPG

Updated on May 29, 2026

You plug your iPhone into your Windows laptop, open the photo folder, and suddenly everything has a .heic extension. You try to open one. Windows Photo Viewer shrugs. You try to attach it to an email. The recipient can't open it. You upload it to a website. It throws an error. Welcome to the HEIC problem — one of the quiet frustrations that iPhone users run into more often than Apple would like to admit.

This guide walks you through exactly what HEIC is, why it breaks things, and — most importantly — how to batch-convert your entire camera roll to JPG so you never deal with this again.

What Even Is HEIC?

HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Container. Apple started using it as the default camera format on iPhones with iOS 11 back in 2017. The compression is genuinely impressive — a HEIC photo typically takes up about half the storage of an equivalent JPG without any visible quality loss. On a 128GB phone where your camera roll is fighting for space with apps and videos, that matters.

The format is based on a video codec called HEVC (H.265), which is why it compresses so well. It can also store multiple images in a single file, which is how iPhone's Live Photos and burst sequences work under the hood.

So if HEIC is technically better, why is everyone converting away from it?

Compatibility. JPG has been the universal standard since the early 1990s. Every browser, every image editor, every social platform, every Windows machine, and every Android device understands JPG without any plugins or workarounds. HEIC, despite being almost a decade old, still fails silently on a huge chunk of software. Older Lightroom versions choke on it. Many website upload forms reject it. Google Docs doesn't handle it. If you're sending photos to your parents who use a Samsung, they may not be able to open them at all.

JPG isn't perfect — it's lossy and doesn't support transparency — but its near-universal support makes it the practical choice for sharing, archiving, and working across devices.

Step 1: Figure Out What You're Working With

Before converting anything, get a sense of the scale. Are you dealing with 20 photos from a recent trip, or 4,000 images from the last two years that you finally transferred off your phone?

On a Mac, open Finder, navigate to your photo folder, and do Edit → Find (or press Command + F). Set the kind to "Image" and the extension to "heic". This gives you a count. On Windows, open File Explorer, go to your photo folder, and search *.heic in the search bar at the top right.

Knowing your count helps you pick the right method. For under 50 photos, an online converter is fine. For hundreds or thousands, you want a local batch tool.

Step 2A: The Easiest Method — Change iPhone Settings Going Forward

This doesn't solve your existing HEIC photos, but it stops new ones from adding to the pile. Go to:

Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible

That's it. From now on, your iPhone shoots JPG natively. You trade a little storage efficiency for a lot of compatibility. For most people, this is the single best change they can make.

One thing to know: even with "Most Compatible" selected, if you AirDrop photos to another Apple device, they'll still transfer as HEIC. But if you transfer via USB cable or share via Messages to a non-Apple user, you'll get JPG. It's not perfectly consistent, but it's a massive improvement.

Step 2B: Convert Existing Photos on Mac (Built-In, No Software Needed)

If you're on a Mac, you already have everything you need. macOS Preview can convert HEIC files to JPG, and it handles batches too.

  1. Select all the HEIC files you want to convert in Finder. You can use Command + A to select everything in the folder.
  2. Right-click and choose Open With → Preview. All selected files will open as a stack in Preview's sidebar.
  3. In Preview, press Command + A to make sure all images are selected in the sidebar.
  4. Go to File → Export Selected Images.
  5. A dialog appears. Choose your destination folder, and critically — click the Options dropdown at the bottom left of the dialog. Change the format from HEIC to JPEG. You can also adjust quality here; 85% is a good balance of file size and quality.
  6. Click Choose. Preview exports all selected images as JPG files to your chosen folder.

This is fast, free, and doesn't send your photos anywhere. For 500 photos, it typically takes two or three minutes on a modern Mac.

Step 2C: Convert on Windows

Windows doesn't have a native HEIC batch converter, but Microsoft does sell a HEIC Image Extensions codec ($0.99 in the Microsoft Store) that lets the built-in Photos app open HEIC files. That gets you viewing, but not easy batch conversion.

For proper batch conversion on Windows, the cleanest free option is iMazing HEIC Converter. It's made by the same people behind the iOS device management tool, it's free, and it doesn't require an internet connection.

  1. Download iMazing HEIC Converter from the official iMazing website (it's a separate free download, not the paid main app).
  2. Install and open it. The interface is minimal — just a drag-and-drop window.
  3. Drag your HEIC files (or an entire folder) into the window.
  4. Set the output format to JPEG and choose a quality level. 90 is a good default for keeping details sharp.
  5. Choose whether to preserve the original EXIF data (location, camera settings, date taken). Keep this checked — it's important for keeping your photo library organized.
  6. Click Convert. Files land in the same folder as the originals by default, with .jpg extensions.

It handles hundreds of files in a batch without issues. I've run 800-photo batches through it and it's completed in under four minutes on a mid-range Windows laptop.

Step 2D: Online Converters (For Small Batches)

If you only have a handful of photos and don't want to install anything, online tools work fine. HEICtoJPEG.com and CloudConvert both handle HEIC reliably.

A few things to be aware of: you're uploading potentially personal photos to a third-party server. For vacation shots, that's probably fine. For sensitive personal images, think twice. Also, most free online converters cap you at 5-10 files per session. If you need to convert 200 photos, you'll be clicking for a while.

For CloudConvert specifically, the process is:

  1. Go to cloudconvert.com and select "Image Converter"
  2. Set input format to HEIC and output format to JPG
  3. Upload your files and click Convert
  4. Download the results as a ZIP file

Step 3: Verify Your Conversions

Don't assume the conversion worked perfectly until you check. Open a few of the output JPG files and look at:

  • Image quality: Any obvious compression artifacts, color shifts, or blurriness that wasn't in the original?
  • EXIF data: Right-click a file, go to Properties (Windows) or Get Info (Mac), and check if the date taken is preserved. If it's showing today's date instead of when the photo was taken, your EXIF data got stripped — try a different tool or method.
  • File size: JPG files should be roughly similar in size to the HEIC originals, or slightly larger. If your 3MB HEIC converted to a 200KB JPG, something went wrong with the quality settings.

Step 4: Organize and Back Up

Once you've confirmed the conversions look good, you have a decision to make about the originals. Don't delete the HEIC files immediately. Move them to a separate folder — something like Photos_HEIC_Archive — and keep them there for a few weeks while you make sure everything transferred correctly.

If you're using Google Photos or iCloud to back things up, make sure your newly converted JPGs get included in the next sync. Google Photos handles this automatically if you're pointing it at the right folder. iCloud can be finicky if you're working with a folder outside the standard Photos library.

A Few Things People Get Wrong

Renaming .heic to .jpg doesn't convert anything. The file extension is just a label. If you just rename the file, the data inside is still HEIC-encoded and most apps will either fail to open it or open it with mangled colors.

Quality settings matter more than you think. Setting JPG quality to 60% to save space is tempting, but you're doing a lossy-to-lossy conversion, which compounds the quality loss. Stay at 85-95% for photos you care about.

AirDrop between Apple devices still uses HEIC. If your workflow involves regularly sending photos to other Apple users, this might not be a problem. But if you're sending to mixed-device households or uploading to web platforms, keep your converted JPGs in a separate "ready to share" folder.

The Bottom Line

HEIC is genuinely good technology that saves storage and maintains quality — Apple wasn't wrong to adopt it. But the compatibility gap between Apple's ecosystem and the rest of the world is real, and it creates friction that simply doesn't need to exist for most users.

Switching your iPhone to shoot in "Most Compatible" mode eliminates the problem going forward. For your existing library, a one-time batch conversion with Preview (Mac) or iMazing HEIC Converter (Windows) takes care of the backlog in minutes. After that, you're done. No more bounced email attachments, no more confused Windows users, no more upload errors on web forms designed by people who assumed everyone uses JPG.

Which, to be fair, most people still do.