How to Stop Your iPhone From Saving Photos as HEIC

This is the entire setting — there is no separate toggle per format, and nothing else to configure once it is set.

Apple states the scope of this setting directly, and it is worth reading carefully because both halves matter.

It changes photos and video together. The Formats screen controls a single setting that governs both: switching to Most Compatible moves photo capture to JPEG and video capture to H.264 in the same step. There is no way to change one without the other from this screen.

It only affects what you capture from this point forward. Every photo and video already in your library — taken before you changed the setting — stays exactly as it was. Apple's documentation is explicit that the setting governs new captures; it performs no retroactive conversion of anything already saved. If you want your existing HEIC photos as JPGs too, that is a separate, deliberate step — converting them — not something this setting does for you.

It is reversible at any time. Apple's own wording for switching back is just as direct: "To return to using the space-saving HEIF and HEVC formats, choose High Efficiency." Nothing is lost by trying Most Compatible and changing your mind later; it is a live setting, not a one-way migration.

Apple's own reasoning for High Efficiency being the default is storage: HEIF and HEVC, per Apple's documentation, "use less storage space on your devices and iCloud Photos, while preserving the same visual quality." Switching to Most Compatible gives that space back to JPEG's larger files — meaning your camera roll will grow faster, iCloud storage fills sooner, and backups over a slow connection take longer, for exactly the same photos.

Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on how often you actually run into the compatibility problem HEIC causes. If you rarely share photos outside iMessage or AirDrop to another Apple device, you may be solving a problem you do not often have, at a real ongoing storage cost. If you regularly send photos to people on Windows or Android, or use photo software that still handles HEIC poorly, the trade is an easy one to make.

The middle ground many people land on without realising it: keep the default and convert individual photos only when you need to. That gets the storage benefit the rest of the time and costs nothing extra when you do need a JPG — one conversion takes a few seconds per photo. Only change the camera setting permanently if you find yourself doing that conversion often enough that it has become the annoyance instead.

"I switched the setting but my old photos are still HEIC." Correct, and expected — the setting was never meant to touch your existing library. Convert the photos you need as a separate step.

"Does this affect Live Photos?" The Formats setting controls the underlying file format, and a Live Photo is still captured as a paired still-plus-video regardless of which format the still uses — switching to Most Compatible does not disable Live Photos, it just changes what format the still half is saved as.

"I don't see a Formats option under Camera." Apple's documentation notes this setting only appears "on iPhone and iPad devices that can capture media in HEIF or HEVC format" — meaning it is tied to specific hardware capability. If the option is missing entirely, your device may simply already be limited to JPEG.

"Will this make my photos worse?" No — JPEG at the quality your iPhone's camera uses is a perfectly capable format; you are trading storage efficiency for compatibility, not trading away visible quality.