About HEIC to JPG
Since iOS 11, iPhones save photos as HEIC rather than JPG. It is a better format — roughly half the size at the same quality — but a great deal of software still will not open it. Windows needs a paid codec, plenty of web upload forms reject it, and older editing software does not recognise it at all.
Converting to JPG fixes that. What makes this tool different is where the conversion happens.
Almost every other HEIC converter uploads your photo. Browsers cannot decode HEIC natively — it is genuinely the one common image format where that is true — so the easy implementation is to send the file to a server that has the codec installed. That is what nearly every result for this search does.
We ship the decoder instead. `libheif` is compiled to WebAssembly and runs inside your browser, so the photo is decoded on your own machine and never transmitted. It costs about 1.5 MB of download the first time you use the tool, which seems a reasonable price for your photographs not leaving your device.
That matters more for HEIC than for most formats, because of what these files are. They are camera-roll photographs: family, children, homes, documents photographed for convenience. They also carry EXIF data including, very often, GPS coordinates accurate to a few metres. Uploading a holiday photo to an unknown converter hands over both the picture and the location it was taken.
On quality. The default is 92, higher than our other converters. HEIC is efficient enough that its images are usually close to pristine, and compressing hard on the way out would throw away what you started with. Expect the JPG to be roughly twice the size of the HEIC — that is the format difference, not a fault.
Live Photos convert their still frame only; the short video track is not extracted. Bursts stored in one container give you the primary image.
If you would rather not convert at all, iPhones can be told to shoot JPG directly: Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible.
Questions
Is my photo uploaded to a server?
No. We ship a WebAssembly build of libheif so decoding happens in your browser. Almost every other HEIC converter uploads, because browsers cannot decode HEIC natively.
Why does the tool take a moment to load the first time?
It downloads about 1.5 MB of WebAssembly decoder. That is the cost of not uploading your photos. It is cached afterwards.
Why is the JPG bigger than the HEIC?
HEIC compresses roughly twice as efficiently as JPG. Doubling in size is expected — you are trading efficiency for compatibility.
Does it keep GPS and camera EXIF data?
No. The image is decoded to pixels and re-encoded, so EXIF including GPS is not carried across. For sharing photos publicly, that is usually a feature.
What about Live Photos?
Only the still image is converted. The accompanying short video is not extracted.