How to Convert HEIC to JPG

Everything runs in your browser: the decoder is loaded, the file is read locally, and nothing is uploaded anywhere. That is worth knowing given how routinely a HEIC photo carries the exact coordinates of where it was taken.

This is a genuine decode, not a shortcut. Unlike some raw-photo formats where a converter can extract an already-finished JPEG that the camera embedded, a HEIC's image data is compressed with HEVC's intra-frame technique and has to be properly decoded pixel by pixel before it can be re-encoded as a JPG. That is more work than an extraction, and it is why conversion takes a real, if still short, moment per photo rather than being close to instant.

Resizing, when you ask for it, happens after that decode: the full-resolution image is drawn onto a canvas at the smaller size and re-encoded from there, so the quality setting and the size limit are applied together rather than as separate passes.

Metadata takes a different path entirely. Rather than being part of the image data heic2any decodes, EXIF lives in the HEIC container's own meta box, located via its item-info and item-location tables. The converter reads that separately and rebuilds it into the JPG's EXIF block — which means metadata preservation and image decoding are two independent steps, and one can succeed while the other fails silently. If a particular file's metadata does not survive, the picture itself is unaffected.

One deliberate correction happens during that rebuild: orientation is always written as "normal" in the output, never copied from the original tag. HEIF decoders already rotate the pixels to the correct orientation before you see them, so carrying over the source file's rotation flag as well would tell EXIF-aware software to rotate an image that is already upright — turning a correctly oriented photo sideways in anything that respects the tag.

The two settings interact, and which one to reach for depends on what the file needs to do next.

Quality (JPG only) trades file size for visible detail. 90%, the default, is close to indistinguishable from the source at normal viewing sizes and is the right choice for anything you might print, edit, or want to keep as your main copy. Below about 70%, compression artifacts start to show in skies, skin tones and other smooth areas.

Size limit matters more than quality for most sharing purposes. An iPhone photo from a recent model can run 3000–4000 pixels on the long edge; almost nowhere you are sending it needs that many. Capping at 1600px, for instance, typically cuts the file to a fraction of its original size with no visible loss on a screen — a bigger and more reliable saving than dropping quality alone.

A practical pairing for common destinations:

If a file still needs to hit an exact size ceiling after that — a form with a strict upload limit, say — compressing it further with a target-size setting is the more precise tool for that specific job.

Camera metadata — make, model, exposure, capture date, GPS — survives by default when converting to JPG, rebuilt from the HEIC's own metadata block. It does not survive at all when converting to PNG, since the metadata rebuild only runs for JPEG output. If you are converting for privacy reasons rather than compatibility, turn metadata off, or strip it afterward from a JPG that already has it.

Orientation always comes out correct, deliberately normalised rather than copied — see above.

Multiple images inside one file — a burst sequence or an auxiliary depth image — all come out, as separate numbered files, rather than only the first with the rest silently dropped.

A Live Photo's motion does not survive, and importantly, this has nothing to do with the converter. The motion is not stored inside the still HEIC file at all; it lives in a separate video file your phone keeps alongside it. Converting the photo was never going to include something that was never in it. What a Live Photo actually is explains the distinction properly.

Add every file at once — settings apply to the whole batch, so there is nothing to reconfigure between photos. Each file is processed and reported individually, so one problematic file does not stop the rest of the batch from finishing; a failed conversion shows its own error message while everything else in the queue completes normally.

For a few hundred photos from a phone backup, this runs comfortably in one pass. For a genuinely large export — thousands of photos at once — expect the browser tab's memory to become the limiting factor before the tool itself does; working in batches of a hundred or so keeps things responsive.

If a batch produces unexpected results — more output files than input files, or several failures in a row — the specific causes and fixes are worth checking before assuming something is broken.