How to convert HEIC to JPG (without uploading your photos)

If you have an iPhone newer than the iPhone 7, the photos in your camera roll are HEIC files by default. The change happened with iOS 11 in 2017, and HEIC has been the default on iPhone, iPad, and the Photos app on Mac ever since. Apple was right to switch to HEIC — the files are roughly half the size of JPG at the same visual quality, thanks to HEVC video-codec techniques applied to still images. The problem is that the rest of the world spent years catching up. Windows didn't get HEIC support until 2022 (Windows 11 only, with a paid codec from the Microsoft Store on Windows 10). Many email clients still can't display HEIC inline. Most web upload forms reject the format. Photo print services don't accept it. The result is the same conversation in millions of group chats: "can you send that as a JPG?"

The fastest fix: in-browser conversion, no upload

The conventional answer is to either change your iPhone's camera settings, install software, or upload to a web service. All three are friction. Changing the camera setting (Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible) means every future photo is JPG, but the photos you already have are still HEIC and Apple's compatibility mode doesn't actually convert them — it only changes the format of new captures. Installing software (a HEIC viewer, Apple's HEIC Image Extensions, or a third-party converter) works once installed but is overkill for the one-off case. Uploading to a web service is fast but sends your photos to someone else's server, which is the wrong tradeoff for personal photos that may have metadata (GPS, capture time, faces) you'd rather not share with a random domain.

The fourth option, which became viable only in the last few years, is to convert HEIC in your browser without uploading. Our HEIC to JPG tool uses heic-to, a WebAssembly port of libheif (the standard open-source HEIC decoder). The wasm decoder lazy-loads on first use — about 3 MB compressed — and caches in your browser for the rest of the session. After the first conversion completes (roughly 3 seconds for the decoder load plus the conversion itself), every subsequent conversion in the same session takes about a second per photo. The file never crosses the network. Your iPhone photos with GPS coordinates, your portrait shots with depth data, your work documents that someone scanned via the iOS Camera app — all stay in your tab.

Step-by-step

Open the tool. Navigate to justfiletools.com/tools/heic-to-jpg.
Drop one or more HEIC files onto the drop zone. The page accepts both .heic and .heif extensions; iPhone exports use .heic, some Android devices use .heif — the file format is the same.
Pick output format. JPG is the default (smaller file, lossy compression — typical use). PNG is the alternative when you need lossless output, but expect 5–10× the file size of the JPG version.
Adjust JPG quality if needed. 92% is the default; 90–95% is the sweet spot where files shrink dramatically but the visible quality is indistinguishable from the original for typical phone photos.
Wait briefly. The first conversion lazy-loads the ~3 MB wasm decoder; subsequent ones are quick. The page shows per-file status as each conversion completes.
Download. Each file gets an individual download link. If you converted multiple files, a one-click ZIP of all the JPGs is also offered.

What gets dropped during conversion

The conversion pipeline reads the HEIC into raw pixel data, then re-encodes those pixels as JPG. The HEIC→pixels stage is lossless — every libheif version produces identical pixels for the same input. The pixels→JPG stage is lossy by definition (JPEG is a lossy codec). What you don't get back in the JPG output:

EXIF metadata. Camera info, GPS coordinates, capture timestamps are not carried through. This is privacy-positive for most users (you usually want the GPS removed before sharing) but if you specifically need the EXIF preserved, use Apple's iCloud-based "Most Compatible" workflow instead, which keeps metadata.
Live Photo video portion. iPhone Live Photos are pairs of files — a HEIC still and a small QuickTime MOV. This tool converts the still only. The video is a separate file you'd export from the Photos app.
Portrait Mode depth maps. The depth channel that subject-selection tools use in Apple's apps does not survive the conversion. The output is a flat 2D JPG. This is a JPG format limitation, not a tool limitation — JPG has no representation for depth data.
HDR data. Newer iPhones capture HDR information in HEIC. The JPG output is standard dynamic range. If you specifically need HDR, the JPG format isn't the right destination — use a HEIF or AVIF output instead.

Edge cases worth knowing

Batch conversions. The tool processes multiple files in sequence, one at a time, to avoid memory spikes for large photos. A batch of 20 photos takes about as long as 20 single-photo conversions plus the one-time decoder load. The output is bundled into a ZIP via JSZip for one-click download.

Very large HEIC files (multi-photo HEIF sequences from some ProRAW captures) extract the primary frame only. If you need each frame, that's a more specialized workflow — use Apple's Image Capture utility on macOS or libheif at the command line.

Files that aren't actually HEIC. Some Android phones save photos with a .heif extension that are actually HEVC video. The tool detects this and shows a clear error rather than crashing. If your "photo" turns out to be a video, the convert-video workflow needs different tools (FFmpeg or a desktop converter).

Alternative approaches and when to use them

iCloud Photos to "Most Compatible" export. If you have a Mac already in the Apple ecosystem, the Photos app can export HEIC as JPG with metadata preserved. For one-off conversions, this is more friction than the browser tool; for ongoing batch workflows where you need EXIF retained, it's the right tool.
Apple's HEIC Image Extensions on Windows 11. Free extension from the Microsoft Store. Once installed, HEIC files open natively in the Photos app and File Explorer. Doesn't convert files but makes them viewable, which is sometimes all you need.
libheif at the command line (for batch power users). heif-convert input.heic output.jpg on macOS / Linux. Fast, scriptable, and you can preserve EXIF with extra flags. Overkill for a few photos; perfect for a directory of 500.
Cloud HEIC converters (the upload-to-a-web-service path). Faster than installing software, but your photos go to someone else's server. For sensitive photos, this is the wrong call.

Privacy considerations

HEIC files often carry GPS coordinates of where the photo was taken, the iPhone model, the focal length and aperture, the timestamp, and (in some configurations) the detected faces and locations. When you upload a HEIC to a converter service, all of that metadata is going to their server alongside the image pixels. Most services have logging and terms of service that say they may retain copies for "service improvement". For a photo of your kitchen, that's probably fine. For a photo of a sensitive document you scanned with your iPhone, or a photo of your home (which encodes your home address via GPS), the upload path is the wrong tradeoff.

The in-browser conversion has no network step. The HEIC bytes are read by the File API into your browser's memory, the wasm decoder runs inside your browser's JavaScript engine, the JPG bytes are written to a blob URL that your browser hands you. No server is involved. You can verify this in DevTools — open the Network panel, drop a HEIC, and watch the panel stay empty (only the one-time wasm fetch happens, and only on first use).

Related tools and guides

EXIF Viewer / Stripper — inspect and remove metadata from photos.
Compress Image — shrink JPG/PNG/WebP files further.
Convert Image — convert between PNG, JPG, and WebP.
How to remove EXIF data from photos.