How to Convert HEIC to JPG (iPhone Photos That Actually Open)
You took a photo on your iPhone, AirDropped or emailed it, and the recipient — using Windows, an old Android, or any non-Apple software — got a file ending in .HEIC that doesn't open. This is one of the most common modern image hassles.
HEIC is a real format, not Apple junk. It's High-Efficiency Image Coding, based on the HEVC video codec. iPhone photos in HEIC are typically half the size of an equivalent JPG with the same visual quality. Apple switched the default in iOS 11 (2017) because storage efficiency mattered when photos started crossing 12 megapixels.
The problem is the rest of the world. Windows didn't ship native HEIC support until late 2018, and required a paid codec extension until 2023. Most older Android phones, web upload forms, hospital portals, government sites — anything not running cutting-edge software — chokes on HEIC.
Convert in your browser
Buncha's HEIC to JPG converter handles this client-side. Drop a HEIC file (or a batch of them); it converts each to JPG and lets you download. No upload, no account.
The conversion uses heic2any, a JavaScript port of libheif. It runs in your browser via WebAssembly — first conversion takes a moment to load the codec, subsequent files are fast.
Quality settings:
- High (95%) — visually identical to the source. File size 30-50% larger than the original HEIC.
- Medium (85%) — default. Visually identical to most viewers; ~2× the HEIC size.
- Low (70%) — for thumbnails or compressed sharing. Half the file size.
Live Photos (HEIC files with embedded video) just convert the still frame. Burst photos and Portrait mode are flattened to a single image.
Stop the conversion problem at the source
If you're tired of converting HEICs every time you share a photo, change the iPhone setting. It's faster than installing a converter app and works for everything you take going forward:
- Open Settings on your iPhone
- Tap Camera
- Tap Formats
- Switch to Most Compatible
Photos taken after that will save as JPG by default. The downside is you'll use a bit more storage; the upside is they open everywhere.
There's also a separate setting for sharing:
- Settings → Photos → scroll to Transfer to Mac or PC → Automatic
Set to "Automatic" and iOS converts HEIC to JPG when you transfer photos via cable. Set to "Keep Originals" if you want to preserve the HEIC for editing in apps that handle it.
Batch converting old photos
If you've already got hundreds of HEICs to deal with, dropping them one at a time gets old fast. The converter handles batches — drop a folder's worth of HEICs and it processes each in turn, downloading them as a ZIP at the end.
For really large libraries (thousands of photos), the browser will struggle around 50-100 files at once. Process in batches of ~50 and the converter stays responsive.
Other image conversions
Same browser-only conversion works across the bulk image converter — JPG, PNG, WebP, BMP, GIF in any direction. The HEIC tool exists separately because heic2any is a bigger dependency that we lazy-load only when you actually need it; the bulk converter doesn't drag it in unless you drop a HEIC.
If you want the converted images smaller, follow up with the image compressor — drop the JPGs from this tool, set a target size, get a compressed batch.