How to convert HEIC to JPG on Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android

• HEIF Image Extensions is free. It teaches Windows the HEIF container, and many Windows 11 PCs already have it.
• HEVC Video Extensions decodes the HEVC-compressed picture inside the file. It costs about $0.99 (€0.99 in Europe) and is rarely preinstalled, apart from on some manufacturers’ PCs.

Because HEIF is only the container, many iPhone photos still won’t display with the free extension alone. If Photos shows a blank image or asks for the HEVC Video Extension, that is the missing piece. On Windows 10, both usually have to be installed by hand. To see what you already have, open Settings → Apps → Installed apps and search for “HEIF” and “HEVC”.

1. 1Right-click the HEIC file and choose Open with → Photos.
2. 2Select the three-dot menu (See more) at the top of the window and choose Save as.
3. 3In the Save as type list, choose .jpg.
4. 4Name the file, pick a folder and select Save. The original HEIC stays untouched.

This is the simplest way to convert HEIC to JPG on Windows 11 without extra software, but it handles one photo at a time. For a folder of photos, use one of the batch methods further down.

1. 1Open Paint, choose File → Open and pick the HEIC photo.
2. 2Choose File → Save as → JPEG picture.
3. 3Name the copy and select Save.

Paint is handy on Windows 10, where the Photos menus look different. It relies on the same extensions, though, so if Photos can’t show the file, Paint can’t either.

Open the HEIC to JPG converter in Edge, Chrome or Firefox and drop your photos in. It decodes the HEIC inside the browser tab, so it works without the HEIF or HEVC extension, on any version of Windows, and on PCs where you can’t install apps, such as a work or school laptop.

• Add one photo or dozens. Each gets its own status and download, and finished files can be saved together as a ZIP.
• Photos are converted locally on your device and never uploaded. Only the page and its HEIC decoder (about 2.7 MB, downloaded once) come from the internet.
• JPG is selected by default, with PNG and WebP one click away.

• “HEVC Video Extension required”, or a blank image in Photos: install the paid HEVC extension, or convert in the browser instead.
• Blank thumbnails in File Explorer: install both extensions, then restart your PC. If the icons still don’t change, run Disk Cleanup and clear Thumbnails so Windows rebuilds them.
• Photos in your iCloud folder show only a name: they may not be downloaded yet. Right-click the folder and choose Always keep on this device.
• Windows 7 and 8: Microsoft’s extensions aren’t available, so Photos and Paint can’t read HEIC at all. A browser converter is the simplest fix.
• No right-click option: Windows has no built-in “convert to JPG” entry in the context menu. Third-party tools such as CopyTrans HEIC for Windows add one; install only software you trust.

To stop the problem at the source, change the two iPhone settings covered in the iPhone section below. New photos then arrive on your PC as JPGs.

1. 1Double-click the HEIC to open it in Preview.
2. 2Choose File → Export.
3. 3Set Format to JPEG and move the Quality slider towards Best for the cleanest result.
4. 4Choose where to save it and click Save.

On macOS Monterey (12) and later, Finder can convert without opening any app, and it handles several files at once.

1. 1Select one or more HEIC files in Finder.
2. 2Control-click (or right-click) and choose Quick Actions → Convert Image.
3. 3Set Format to JPEG and Image Size to Actual Size, and tick Preserve Metadata to keep the date and location.
4. 4Click Convert to JPEG. The new files appear next to the originals.

If the pictures live in your Photos library, select them and choose File → Export → Export Photos (the menu item shows how many are selected). Set Photo Kind to JPEG, pick the quality and size, then click Export. Avoid Export Unmodified Original, which gives you the HEIC files back.

1. 1In Photos, select the pictures, tap Share and choose Save to Files.
2. 2Open the Files app and go to the folder you saved them in.
3. 3Touch and hold a photo, then choose Quick Actions → Convert Image. This needs iOS 16 or later.
4. 4Choose JPEG and a size. Original keeps full resolution, and the JPG is saved next to the HEIC.

If you convert often, the Shortcuts app has a Convert Image action too. A shortcut that takes photos from the share sheet, converts them to JPEG and saves them to an album turns the whole job into two taps.

Open the HEIC to JPG converter in Safari, tap the box and choose Photo Library. Pick your photos, convert them and download the JPGs, which land in Files → Downloads. This works on an iPad too, and on iPhones too old for iOS 16.

1. 1Open Settings → Camera → Formats.
2. 2Choose Most Compatible.

From then on, the camera saves photos as JPG and videos as H.264. Photos you already have don’t change, and there are trade-offs: JPGs take roughly twice the space, and on recent iPhones some video modes, such as 4K at 60 fps, 240 fps slow motion and HDR video, need High Efficiency. The Camera settings tell you when an option requires it.

Open Settings → Apps → Photos (Settings → Photos on iOS 17 and earlier), scroll to Transfer to Mac or PC and choose Automatic. When you import over a USB cable, the iPhone then converts photos to a compatible format such as JPG as they are copied. Keep Originals sends the HEIC files unchanged.

Sharing works in a similar way. When you send a photo by Mail or Messages to a device that can’t read HEIC, iOS may convert it to JPG for you. AirDrop to another Apple device keeps the HEIC.

Screenshots ignore the Camera setting. Since iOS 26, they follow Settings → General → Screen Capture → Format instead: HDR saves screenshots as HEIF, with the .HEIC extension, while SDR saves them as PNG. If you need screenshots that open anywhere, switch the format to SDR. The HDR option only appears on iPhones with an HDR display.

Both keep files in the format they were uploaded in, so an iPhone photo usually downloads as a .heic file again, whether from the app or from the website. Download it, then convert it in the browser as described below.

Galaxy phones save HEIF photos themselves when High efficiency pictures is turned on in the Camera settings; turn it off to go back to JPG. Some One UI versions also have a Convert HEIF images when sharing option in the Gallery settings, which sends a JPG copy whenever you share. On newer versions it may sit under Gallery Labs or be missing.

Open the HEIC to JPG converter in Chrome, tap the box and pick the photos from your files or gallery. The conversion runs on the phone itself, which matters for personal photos, and the JPGs are saved to your Downloads folder.

1. 1Open the HEIC to JPG converter and drop in the whole selection, or click the box and press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on a Mac) in the file picker.
2. 2Leave JPG selected and convert. Every photo shows its own progress, and a failed one can be retried without restarting the rest.
3. 3Download the JPGs one by one or all together as a ZIP.

It is free and unlimited, with no sign-up and no cap on how many photos you convert. Very large batches of multiple photos simply take longer on older phones and laptops, because the work happens on your own device.

Finder’s Quick Actions → Convert Image, described above, converts a whole selection in one go. In Preview, open all the photos together, click in the sidebar and press Cmd+A, then choose File → Export Selected Images, click Options and set Format to JPEG.

Want a one-click option that always outputs JPG? Build a Quick Action in Automator with the Change Type of Images action set to JPEG, and it appears in Finder’s right-click menu.

In Terminal, the built-in sips tool converts every HEIC in the current folder into a new jpg folder (use *.heic instead if your files have lowercase extensions):

mkdir -p jpg
for f in *.HEIC; do
  sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 90 "$f" --out "jpg/${f%.*}.jpg"
done

• IrfanView (free for non-commercial use): install the official plugins, then choose File → Batch Conversion/Rename, add the HEIC files, set the output format to JPG and click Start Batch. If it can’t open the files, add the HEIF and HEVC extensions.
• XnConvert (free for personal use): add files or a whole folder, set the Output tab to JPG and click Convert. It also runs on Mac and Linux.
• Adobe Photoshop: File → Scripts → Image Processor converts a folder to JPEG, as long as Windows has the HEIF and HEVC extensions.

ImageMagick 7 converts a folder in place when it is built with HEIC support. On ImageMagick 6, which many Linux distributions still ship, drop the word magick:

magick mogrify -format jpg -quality 90 *.heic

If ImageMagick can’t read HEIC, install libheif’s command-line tools (libheif-examples on Ubuntu and Debian) and run heif-dec photo.heic photo.jpg, called heif-convert in older versions. FFmpeg is less dependable here: iPhone photos are stored as a grid of tiles, and older FFmpeg versions decode only one tile. In Python, the pillow-heif package adds HEIC support to Pillow:

from pathlib import Path
from PIL import Image
from pillow_heif import register_heif_opener

register_heif_opener()
for path in Path(".").glob("*.heic"):
    Image.open(path).convert("RGB").save(path.with_suffix(".jpg"), quality=90)