HEIC to AVIF Converter

How to Convert HEIC to AVIF Online

1. Upload Your HEIC File: Drag and drop or click "Choose Files" to add HEIC photos straight from your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Batch upload multiple shots in one session.
2. Pick Quality Preset: Choose Very High (Recommended) for visually lossless web copies, High for everyday sharing, or Medium/Low for thumbnails. For precise budgets, switch to "Specific file size" and enter a target in KB or MB — the encoder will hit that ceiling for each image.
3. Set Image Resolution (Optional): Keep the original dimensions, scale by percentage, pick a Preset Resolution (144p through 4320p / 8K), or type exact Width × Height. The aspect-ratio lock fills the missing side automatically.
4. Convert and Download: Click Convert. Files are processed in your browser session — no account, no watermark, no email gate. Download individually or grab everything as a zip.

Why Convert HEIC to AVIF?

HEIC and AVIF both descend from modern video codecs — HEIC wraps HEVC/H.265 still frames, AVIF wraps AV1 — and both beat JPEG by a wide margin on file size. The difference is reach. HEIC plays back on roughly 15% of browsers (Safari only, per caniuse), while AVIF works on ~94% of browsers including Chrome 85+, Firefox 93+, Edge 121+, and Safari 16.4+. If your image is going anywhere outside Apple's walled garden, AVIF is the format that actually loads.

• Publish iPhone photos to the open web — iPhone 7 and later shoot HEIC by default on iOS 11+. AVIF gets those shots rendering in every modern browser without forcing a JPEG fallback that doubles the byte count.
• Cut Core Web Vitals LCP — AVIF typically produces files 20-30% smaller than WebP and 50%+ smaller than JPEG at matched quality, shrinking hero images and speeding up the Largest Contentful Paint that Google ranks on.
• Escape HEVC patent licensing — AVIF is royalty-free under AOMedia; HEIC carries HEVC/H.265 patent obligations that have kept Chromium, Firefox, and most CDNs from shipping decoders. Converting upstream sidesteps the whole legal stack.
• Keep HDR and wide gamut intact — AVIF supports 8, 10, and 12-bit depth with PQ and HLG transfer functions (AOMedia spec). HDR HEIC from an iPhone 12 Pro or later survives the round-trip if you stay on the Very High preset.
• Preserve transparency for product shots — HEIC's alpha support is limited and inconsistent across decoders. AVIF carries a full alpha channel, so PNG-style cutouts compress to a fraction of the size without falling back to PNG.
• Future-proof your media library — AVIF is what Netflix, Cloudflare, and Vercel ship to browsers today. Converting now means you stop re-encoding the same archive every time a CDN drops a new format.

HEIC vs AVIF — Format Comparison

AVIF Quality Preset Guide

Sizes depend on subject detail — a flat sky compresses harder than a forest scene. For pixel-peeping work, set "Specific file size" instead and let the encoder hit your budget.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will my iPhone's HDR and Live Photo data survive the conversion?

HDR gain maps and wide-gamut color (Display P3 / Rec.2020) carry through into AVIF when you keep the Very High or Highest preset — AVIF supports the same PQ and HLG transfer functions HEIC uses. Live Photo motion does not transfer; only the still frame is converted. If you need the motion component, export the paired MOV separately from Photos.

Why does AVIF take longer to encode than HEIC?

AV1 is a denser codec than HEVC and runs more rate-distortion analysis per block, so encoding is several times slower in exchange for ~20-30% smaller files at the same quality. Decoding in modern browsers is fast — the slowdown is only at conversion time. For batches, expect a few seconds per megapixel on a typical laptop.

Which browsers and devices can display AVIF without a fallback?

Chrome 85+, Firefox 93+, Edge 121+, Opera 71+, and Safari 16.4+ on macOS Ventura / iOS 16. Per caniuse data, that covers about 94% of global browser traffic. Internet Explorer, Opera Mini, and pre-2023 Safari versions will not render AVIF — for those, serve a JPEG or WebP fallback via the HTML <picture> element.

Should I convert HEIC to AVIF or just to JPEG?

If the target is a modern website or app, AVIF — you keep the size advantage and gain near-universal browser reach. If the recipient is an older device, an email client, a print shop, or a CMS that rejects unknown MIME types, HEIC to JPG is the safer pick. Many sites ship both via <picture> and let the browser choose.

Is AVIF actually smaller than HEIC, or just smaller than JPEG?

Both are smaller than JPEG, but AVIF typically edges out HEIC at the same perceptual quality, especially on flat regions and gradients where AV1's larger transform sizes shine. The gap is often 10-20% in AVIF's favor on real photos, though HEIC can pull ahead on grainy or high-frequency textures. For most iPhone shots, expect a meaningful size drop on top of the codec's broader compatibility win.

Can I batch convert my entire iCloud Photos export?

Yes. Drop a folder of HEIC files (or unzip the iCloud download first) and apply one Quality Preset across the batch. Each photo is encoded with the same settings then offered as separate downloads or a single zip. For libraries over a few hundred files, work in chunks so your browser tab stays responsive.

Why does my AVIF look slightly different from the HEIC original?

Both formats are lossy and use different color pipelines. HEIC ships from iOS in a specific Display P3 profile; AVIF re-encodes into AV1's color space which may apply a perceptually neutral but not bit-identical transform. At Very High or Highest, differences are visible only on side-by-side pixel inspection. For an exact match, you would need a lossless format like HEIC to PNG — at the cost of 5-10× the file size.

Does the converter strip EXIF and GPS metadata?

EXIF (camera model, exposure, timestamps) is preserved by default in the AVIF container. GPS coordinates ride along with EXIF, so if you are publishing photos to the public web, run a metadata stripper afterward or use a separate workflow to scrub location data before upload.

What about other formats — should I look at WebP or JPEG XL too?

WebP is a safer fallback when you need ~97% browser reach and don't want to ship two files; see HEIC to WebP for that route. JPEG XL has better quality per byte than AVIF but ships in only Safari today, so it isn't yet a web-safe target. For 2026 web delivery, AVIF remains the highest-impact choice; if you also want the file smaller still, run the output through Compress AVIF to dial in an exact byte budget.