HEIC to BMP Converter — Convert iPhone Photos to Bitmap Online
Got an iPhone .HEIC that some older Windows program or industrial tool refuses to open? Drop it below and pick BMP for an uncompressed 24-bit bitmap it can read without a decoder. Free, private, and entirely in your browser — the photo is never uploaded.
Drop images here or click to browse
Supports HEIC, WEBP, AVIF, BMP, TIFF, SVG, GIF, ICO, PDF, JPG, PNG
100% Private — Your files never leave your device
All conversion happens directly in your browser using JavaScript. Nothing is uploaded to any server. Your images stay on your computer the entire time.
When to Use BMP Format
The honest answer first: hardly ever, and rarely as the destination for an iPhone photo. People convert HEIC because it's an Apple-only format most non-Apple software still can't open — but the natural landing spot is JPG, which is tiny and universal, or PNG, which is lossless. BMP earns its place only when a specific program demands raw, uncompressed pixels:
- Machine vision and instrument software: lab, medical, and industrial inspection packages standardise on BMP because a frame is a header followed by raw pixels — no decoder, no library, and no chance of a malformed compressed stream stalling a production line.
- Legacy Win32 applications: in-house line-of-business tools and older utilities that read pixels through the plain Win32 imaging calls will take a 24-bit BMP without complaint. Many were compiled before HEIC — or even PNG — was something a Windows program could assume.
- Embedded systems and microcontrollers: there's nothing to decompress, so a bitmap can be streamed straight to a small display. A HEIC would need a full HEVC decoder and a frame buffer first — real work on a modest chip.
- Windows resource pipelines and older SDKs: splash screens, toolbar strips, and installer graphics in long-lived codebases are often still specified as BMP because that's what the tooling was written for.
If none of those describe you, BMP is the wrong destination for an iPhone photo. Our image format by use case guide names a better target for web, print, email, and archive.
HEIC vs BMP: File Size Comparison
This is where the two formats could not be further apart. HEIC uses HEVC, a modern video codec that discards perceptually-unimportant detail, so a 12-megapixel iPhone photo usually weighs only 1.5–3 MB. BMP does the opposite of compress: it writes every pixel out uncompressed at three bytes, so its size depends on the image's dimensions and nothing else — not the subject, not the detail, not how the phone shot it. Three bytes per pixel, plus a 54-byte header and a little row padding:
| Dimensions | Typical source | BMP size |
|---|---|---|
| 4032 × 3024 | 12 MP photo (most iPhones) | 34.9 MB |
| 8064 × 6048 | 48 MP HEIF (iPhone 14 Pro and later) | 139.5 MB |
| 2016 × 1512 | Binned / older iPhone camera | 8.7 MB |
| 1170 × 2532 | iPhone 13/14 screenshot | 8.5 MB |
| 1290 × 2796 | iPhone 15/16 Pro Max screenshot | 10.3 MB |
Those BMP figures are arithmetic, not guesses — the bitmap for a 4032×3024 photo is always34.9 MB, whether it's a blank wall or a forest. The HEIC side is the part that varies, and it varies a lot: a flat scene like a clear sky compresses to well under a megabyte, a noisy low-light shot to three or four. Put the two together and a standard iPhone photo grows roughly 12–25× on its way to BMP, and a 48-megapixel HEIF balloons past 100 MB. Unlike a lossy conversion, none of those extra bytes buy you anything — the picture is the same one that came off the decoder.
So treat BMP as a delivery format for one stubborn program, not as a way to store photos. If you want a smaller universal file, convert to JPG; if you want a lossless master for editing, PNG is lossless like BMP but a great deal smaller.
What the Conversion Does to Your Photo
The .HEIC is a HEIF container holding an HEVC-compressed frame. Converting to BMP runs the HEVC decoder once to recover the pixels, then writes those pixels straight into an uncompressed bitmap. A few things about the round trip are worth knowing:
- The bitmap itself loses nothing. BMP is uncompressed, so every pixel the decoder produces is written out byte for byte — there's no second lossy step and no quality slider to tune.
- 10-bit colour is folded to 8-bit. HEIC can store 10 bits per channel; the browser canvas the converter decodes through holds 8-bit samples, so the extra headroom is gone before the BMP writer sees it. That matters for HDR source data, not for ordinary photos.
- There's no alpha channel. A 24-bit BMP has nowhere to put transparency, and any partly-transparent pixel is flattened onto white. iPhone camera photos are opaque, so this almost never bites — but a screenshot of translucent UI would lose its see-through areas.
- Metadata and Apple extras are dropped. EXIF date and GPS location, the Live Photo video, the Portrait-mode depth map, and burst siblings all live in the HEIF container; only the primary still frame reaches the bitmap.
How to Convert HEIC to BMP on Windows and Mac
The converter above works on any operating system, handles several files at once, and never uploads anything — your browser decodes the HEIC with a WebAssembly HEVC decoder and the bitmap is assembled byte by byte in JavaScript on your own machine:
- Drag your .HEIC file into the drop zone, or click to browse and select it.
- Choose BMP from the Output Format menu.
- Download the converted bitmap — it's saved straight to your device. Drop several HEICs at once and you can take them away together as a ZIP.
If you would rather use software already on the machine:
- Windows: Windows can't open a HEIC at all until the free HEIF Image Extensions from the Microsoft Store are installed. Once they are, open the photo in Paint and choose File → Save as → BMP picture — Paint writes a 24-bit bitmap and flattens any transparency, the same as this tool. It does one file at a time.
- Mac: Preview opens HEIC natively. Choose File → Export, then hold the Option key while opening the Format menu — BMP stays hidden until you do. That hidden entry is why people conclude a Mac can't write BMP at all.
Both built-in options are fine for a single file. Neither does a folder in one go, and Windows needs the store extension first — which is the main reason to use the tool above.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I convert HEIC to BMP for free?
Yes. This converter is completely free with no sign-up, watermarks, or file limits. Your iPhone photo is decoded with a WebAssembly HEVC decoder and the bitmap is assembled in JavaScript, all inside your browser — the .HEIC never leaves your device and there are no usage caps.
Why would anyone convert a HEIC to BMP?
Only because a specific program demands an uncompressed bitmap. HEIC is an Apple-flavoured HEIF file that most non-Apple software still can't open, so people convert away from it constantly — but almost always to JPG or PNG, which are smaller and universally readable. BMP is the right target in one narrow situation: the tool at the end of your workflow reads raw pixels and nothing else. A machine-vision inspection package, an instrument driver, an embedded display, or an in-house Win32 utility written against the old imaging calls will take a 24-bit BMP without a decoder or a library. If nothing is forcing BMP on you, convert HEIC to JPG or PNG instead.
Will the BMP be bigger than the HEIC?
Dramatically — usually by more than ten times. HEIC uses HEVC, a modern video codec that throws away perceptually-unimportant detail, so a 12-megapixel iPhone photo is often only 1.5–3 MB. BMP stores every pixel uncompressed at three bytes, so that same 4032×3024 photo becomes exactly 34.9 MB no matter what the picture contains. The BMP figure is fixed by the image's dimensions alone; the HEIC figure is what your phone managed to compress. The gap is typically 12–25× for a standard iPhone photo, and far more for a 48-megapixel HEIF.
Does HEIC to BMP conversion lose quality?
The bitmap keeps every pixel the decoder produces — BMP is uncompressed, so there's no second round of lossy compression. Two things do change. HEIC can store 10 bits per channel; the browser canvas the converter decodes through holds 8-bit samples, so a 10-bit HEIC is folded to 8-bit before the BMP is written. And the HEIC was already lossily compressed when your iPhone saved it, so any detail it discarded then is gone and the BMP can't bring it back. What BMP costs you in bytes, it does not cost you in fidelity beyond that 8-bit fold.
What happens to my photo's location and date?
They're stripped. EXIF metadata — the GPS location, the timestamp, the camera and lens model — lives in the HEIF container, and a 24-bit BMP has nowhere to store it. Canvas-based conversion keeps the pixels and drops everything else, which is often exactly what you want when handing a photo to a legacy tool, but worth knowing if you were relying on the capture date. Apple's extras — the Live Photo video, Portrait-mode depth map, and any auxiliary alpha — are dropped too; only the primary still frame survives.
What kind of BMP does this tool write?
The most compatible kind there is: a 24-bit, uncompressed BI_RGB bitmap with a 40-byte BITMAPINFOHEADER and bottom-up row order. That's the layout Windows has understood since version 3.0 in 1990, and it's what a program using the plain Win32 imaging calls expects. There's no colour table, no run-length encoding, and no BITMAPV5 colour-space block for an old reader to trip over. If a program accepts BMP at all, it accepts this one.
Should I convert HEIC to BMP or to JPG?
Convert to JPG for almost everything — emailing, uploading, texting, or simply opening the photo on a Windows or Android device. JPG is a fraction of the size and every program reads it. Choose BMP only when a specific piece of software refuses compressed input and insists on a raw bitmap. If you need a lossless master for editing rather than a legacy bitmap, PNG is the better target: it's lossless like BMP but a great deal smaller.