AVIF to HEIF Converter

AVIF vs HEIF — Which Should You Convert To?

These two look almost identical from the outside: both are still images wrapped in an ISO base media container, both descend from video codecs, both compress photographs to roughly half of what JPEG needs. The difference that matters is what is inside. AVIF carries an AV1-coded picture and is a web format; HEIF as written here carries an HEVC-coded picture and is an operating-system and photo-library format. Short answer: stay on AVIF if the file is going on a web page or to a mixed audience, and convert to HEIF when an Apple-ecosystem app, a photo library or a device pipeline expects the HEVC payload.

Side-by-side Comparison

When to Stay on AVIF

• The image is going on a web page, in an email, or anywhere the viewer's software is unknown.
• You need one file that opens in Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari without a fallback.
• You care about licensing: AV1 is royalty-free, HEVC is not.
• You are already at the smallest useful size and do not want a second lossy pass.

When to Convert to HEIF

• An Apple app, a photo-library importer or a device workflow rejects .avif but accepts .heif / .heic.
• You are feeding a pipeline that was written around HEVC-coded stills and cannot be changed.
• You want to keep the alpha channel and the small file size, and JPEG's flattening to a solid background is unacceptable.
• The image will be viewed on Apple hardware, where HEIF is a first-class citizen rather than an import.

What Survives the Transcode

How to Convert AVIF to HEIF

1. Upload Your AVIF Files: Drag and drop your .avif files onto the page or click "Add Files". Queue as many as you like; they all convert with the same settings.
2. Pick a Quality Preset: Image Compression starts on Quality Preset, set to Very High (Recommended). Higher presets keep more detail at a larger size; lower ones compress harder.
3. Or Target a Size Instead: Switch Image Compression to Specific file size to name an exact ceiling in megabytes — the direct quality-percentage slider doesn't appear on this convert page, so the preset and the size target are your two controls. Image resolution stays on Keep original unless you scale it down.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert and save the .heif. Files upload over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

Frequently Asked Questions

If AVIF and HEIF share a container, why does anything have to be re-encoded?

Because the container is the only thing they share. Both are ISO base media files, but the picture inside an AVIF is coded with AV1 and the picture inside a HEIF is coded with HEVC — different codecs entirely. Renaming the file does nothing; the pixels have to be decoded from AV1 and re-encoded as HEVC, which is what happens on our servers.

Will I lose quality converting AVIF to HEIF?

Some, in principle. Both formats are lossy by default, so this is a lossy-to-lossy transcode and the second encode adds a generation of loss on top of whatever the AVIF already discarded. Keeping the Quality Preset at Very High makes it hard to spot at normal viewing sizes, but nothing can restore detail the original AVIF encode already threw away.

Which codec does the .heif file actually use?

HEVC. Our encoder picks the payload from the output extension — an .avif target gets AV1, and anything else in the HEIF family, including .heif and .heic, gets HEVC. That is exactly the behaviour Apple's tools and most HEIF readers expect, and it is why this conversion is a real transcode rather than a rewrap.

Is HEIF the same thing as the HEIC photos my iPhone takes?

They are the same container and, here, the same codec — HEIC is conventionally the name for the HEVC-coded variant of HEIF, and it is the format Apple has used for iPhone captures since iOS 11. The practical difference is the file extension, and some software is fussy about it. If an app specifically wants .heic, use AVIF to HEIC instead of this page.

Why will my HEIF file not open in Chrome or on Android?

Because HEIF was never a web image format. Chrome, Edge and Firefox do not decode it, and it does not appear among the image types those browsers document as supported. Its home is the operating system: Apple Photos, iOS and macOS apps, and device camera pipelines. If you need something that opens anywhere, keep the AVIF or produce a JPG from your AVIF.

Does the conversion keep my image's transparency?

Yes. HEIF stores alpha as an auxiliary image item in the same way AVIF does, so a transparent or partially transparent AVIF converts without being flattened onto a background. This is the main advantage over converting to JPEG, which has no alpha channel at all and must composite transparent pixels onto a solid colour.

What happens if my AVIF is animated?

You get the first frame as a single still. HEIF can carry image sequences in principle, but this conversion produces a still image, so an animated AVIF is reduced to one frame. If you need to keep the motion, target an animation format instead — AVIF to APNG or AVIF to GIF.

Will the HEIF be smaller than the AVIF?

Usually not by much, and often slightly larger at the same visual quality. AV1 and HEVC are close in efficiency, with AV1 generally holding a small edge at low bitrates, so converting for size alone is not worth doing. Convert for compatibility with HEVC-based software; if you want a genuinely smaller file, lower the Quality Preset or set a Specific file size target instead.

Are my uploaded images kept or shared?

No. Files travel over an encrypted connection, are processed on our servers, and are deleted automatically after a few hours together with the HEIF we produce. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and nothing is shared or made public.