Apple defaulted iPhones to HEIC for camera output in 2017. Eight years later half of the internet still can't read them. If you've ever tried to upload an iPhone photo to LinkedIn or attach one to a Windows-bound email, you know the pain.

What is HEIC?

HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) wraps a HEVC-compressed image. It's roughly half the file size of JPEG at equivalent quality — great for iPhone storage, awful for compatibility.

When you need JPG instead

• Uploading to most government / legal portals
• Sending to anyone on Windows < 10 or many Linux distros
• Editing in older Photoshop or design tools
• Embedding in Word, PowerPoint, or PDF documents
• Print fulfillment (most printers reject HEIC)

Quickest path

1. Open the HEIC to JPG converter.
2. Drop one or many .heic files from your camera roll.
3. Quality is preset to 85 — visually indistinguishable from original.
4. Download. Done.

The whole batch runs in seconds even for hundreds of photos.

Bonus: stop your iPhone from saving HEIC in the first place

If you'd rather your iPhone capture in JPEG natively:

1. Settings → Camera → Formats
2. Tap Most Compatible (replaces "High Efficiency")
3. New photos save as JPEG going forward. Existing HEIC photos stay as HEIC.

You lose ~40% of storage efficiency but skip the conversion step forever.

What about EXIF metadata?

By default our converter preserves EXIF. If you're sharing photos publicly, tick "Strip EXIF metadata" on the converter — removes GPS coordinates, camera serial, and the timestamp.