HEIC vs. JPG: What's the Difference and When Should You Convert?

If you own an iPhone, your photos are almost certainly saved as HEIC files — and you've probably hit the wall where a Windows PC, an email attachment, or a website refuses to open them. This guide explains what HEIC actually is, why Apple uses it, how it stacks up against good old JPG, and when it's worth converting.

What Is HEIC?

HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Container. It's a file format — really a wrapper around the HEIF (High Efficiency Image File) standard — that stores still images using the same HEVC video codec used by streaming services and modern TVs. The clever bit is that compressing still images with a video codec turns out to be dramatically more efficient than the 30-year-old algorithm JPG uses.

In practical terms, a HEIC photo is roughly 50% the size of an equivalent JPG at the same visual quality. A typical 12-megapixel iPhone photo that would be ~3 MB as a JPG is around 1.5 MB as a HEIC. Across thousands of photos, that adds up to gigabytes of saved storage.

Why Apple Switched to HEIC

Apple adopted HEIC as the default in iOS 11 (2017) for one main reason: camera resolutions kept climbing, and iCloud storage costs real money. By halving the size of every photo, Apple effectively doubled how much your phone and your iCloud tier could hold without changing the hardware.

HEIC also supports things JPG never could: 16-bit color depth (more accurate gradients, less banding in skies), transparency, non-destructive edits, image sequences, and even depth maps for Portrait Mode. It's a genuinely modern format. The catch — and there's always a catch — is that the rest of the world wasn't ready for it.

HEIC vs. JPG: A Side-by-Side

	HEIC	JPG
File size	~50% smaller	Baseline
Visual quality	Equal or better at the same size	Good at high quality
Color depth	Up to 16-bit	8-bit only
Transparency	Yes	No
Apple support	Native, default	Native
Windows support	Requires paid extension	Native, universal
Android support	Mostly yes since Android 10	Native, universal
Web upload forms	Hit or miss	Always accepted
Old software	Usually no	Always

Where HEIC Breaks

HEIC works flawlessly until it leaves the Apple ecosystem. The most common places it falls over:

Sending photos to Windows users.Older Windows machines can't open HEIC at all. Even Windows 10/11 needs Microsoft's HEIF and HEVC extensions installed, and the HEVC one isn't free.
Uploading to websites. Many web forms (job applications, government portals, real-estate listings, school photo uploads) still only accept JPG and PNG.
Email attachments.Some email clients preview HEIC, many don't. The recipient on Outlook 2016 will see a blank icon.
Printing services. Most consumer print services accept JPG only; HEIC uploads get rejected or quietly fail.
Older image editors.Photoshop CC and Affinity Photo handle HEIC fine; older Photoshop, GIMP without plugins, and most legacy tools don't.
Cross-platform sharing apps. Slack, Discord, and Twitter usually convert on upload, but the conversion can degrade quality or strip metadata.

If any of these match what you're doing with the photo, convert to JPG before sending and skip the support tickets.

When to Keep HEIC

Converting everything to JPG would undo the storage savings Apple worked hard to give you. Keep photos as HEIC when:

You're storing them on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac and viewing through Photos or iCloud.
You're sharing with other Apple users via AirDrop, iMessage, or Shared Albums — they'll get HEIC and it will Just Work.
You're archiving originals and don't need to actively use them in non-Apple software.

How to Convert HEIC to JPG

You have three reasonable options, depending on whether you're converting one photo or a hundred:

In your browser. Drop the HEIC files into the converter on this site, pick JPG, download. No upload, no install, no account. Works on phone or laptop. Best for one-off batches.
On the iPhone itself. Toggle Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible and new photos save as JPG. Existing photos stay HEIC — you still need to convert those, but at least it stops the bleeding.
Email the photo to yourself.iOS converts HEIC to JPG automatically when you attach to most email clients — a useful one-off trick when you don't have a computer handy.

Convert HEIC to JPG Now

Drop your iPhone HEIC photos and get JPGs back. Free, private, and the conversion runs entirely in your browser — files never leave your device.

Open the HEIC to JPG Converter

Related Converters

HEIC to JPG HEIC to PNG HEIC to WebP JPG to PNG

Frequently Asked Questions

Is HEIC better than JPG?

Better at compression, not better in every way. A HEIC file is roughly half the size of a JPG at the same visual quality, which saves space on your iPhone. JPG is better at being opened by everything — Windows, websites, email clients, older software. HEIC wins on efficiency; JPG wins on compatibility. If you only ever stay inside Apple devices and iCloud, HEIC is great. The moment you hand a file to a Windows PC, an Android phone, or a web upload form, JPG is the safer choice.

Will I lose quality converting HEIC to JPG?

Very little, if you keep the quality setting at 90% or higher. Both HEIC and JPG are lossy formats, so the conversion isn't pixel-perfect, but at 90–95% quality the difference is essentially invisible to the eye. The file will be larger than the original HEIC — that's the trade-off for the universal compatibility you get back. If you want to keep absolutely all the information, convert to PNG instead.

Why won't my HEIC photo open on Windows?

Older versions of Windows don't recognize HEIC out of the box. Windows 10 and 11 can open HEIC if you install Microsoft's HEIF Image Extensions from the Microsoft Store (and the HEVC Video Extensions for some files), but it's a paid extension and not installed by default. The simpler fix is to convert the file to JPG before sending it.

Can I make my iPhone stop taking HEIC photos?

Yes. Open Settings → Camera → Formats and switch from "High Efficiency" to "Most Compatible." New photos will be saved as JPG instead of HEIC. Existing HEIC photos in your library stay as HEIC — you'll need to convert those separately. Switching to JPG roughly doubles the space each photo takes, so it's a real trade-off.

Does converting HEIC to JPG keep my EXIF data?

It depends on the converter. EXIF metadata — the date, GPS location, camera settings, orientation — lives separately from the pixels and can be carried across formats. Good converters preserve it; some strip it. If location data matters (organizing by where photos were taken) or you care about timestamps, check that your converter keeps EXIF. The converter on this site preserves EXIF by default.