HEIF to AVIF Converter

HEIF vs AVIF — Which Should You Convert To?

If you have HEIF photos that will not display on the web, AVIF is almost always the right target. The two formats are closer relatives than most comparisons admit — AVIF files are, by design, conformant HEIF files — so what really changes is the codec inside the box and the licensing that comes with it. Convert to AVIF when the images need to render for people who are not on Apple hardware. Stay on HEIF only when every device in the chain is Apple and you want the camera's native file untouched.

Side-by-side Comparison

Both formats sit on the ISO base media file format, and an AVIF file is required to carry the miaf brand in its file-type box. The change you are making is the codec inside the container — HEVC out, AV1 in — plus a licensing change, not a rebuild of the file structure.

When to Pick HEIF (HEIC)

• Your whole pipeline is Apple — Photos, iCloud, Preview — and you would rather not add a conversion step.
• You are archiving the original capture and want exactly the bytes the camera wrote.
• You depend on HEVC hardware decoding that is already present on your Apple devices.
• You need a format that Apple's own apps treat as first-class for editing round-trips.

When to Pick AVIF

• You are publishing photos to a website, blog, or CMS and they must render in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge as well as Safari.
• You want one open, royalty-free format across a mixed image library instead of a patent-encumbered one.
• You need strong compression for delivery while keeping HDR, wide-gamut colour, and alpha.
• You want to avoid HEVC licensing friction inside your own software or hosting stack.

How to Convert HEIF to AVIF

1. Upload Your HEIF Files: Drag and drop your .heif images onto the page or click "+ Add Files". Queue as many as you like; they are converted with the same settings.
2. Pick a Quality Preset: Under Image Compression, the Quality Preset dropdown defaults to "Very High (Recommended)". Lower presets trade visible detail for smaller AVIF files.
3. Set a Target Size or Resolution (Optional): Switch Image Compression to "Specific file size" to aim at an exact byte target, or use Image resolution — Resolution Percentage, a Preset Resolution, or an explicit Width x Height — to scale the image down. "Keep original" preserves full dimensions.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save your .avif. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours — no sign-up, no watermark.

What Each Quality Preset Sends to the Encoder

If your files carry the .heic extension rather than .heif, use HEIC to AVIF instead. For maximum compatibility with older software, HEIF to JPG outputs a universally readable image, and AVIF to HEIF goes the other way.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is AVIF better than HEIF for putting photos on the web?

For web use, decisively. HEIF renders natively only in Safari 17 and later, roughly 15% of browsers by global usage, so the identical file appears broken in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. AVIF is handled by about 95% of browsers — Chrome from 85, Firefox from 93, Safari from 16.4, Edge from 121, Opera from 71 and Samsung Internet from 14. You keep modern compression and gain nearly universal rendering. HEIF still makes sense as a storage format inside an all-Apple workflow.

Will I lose quality converting HEIF to AVIF?

It is a lossy-to-lossy transcode: the HEVC data is decoded and the picture is re-encoded with AV1. You cannot recover detail HEIF already discarded, and a second lossy pass can soften fine texture slightly. At the default "Very High" preset the difference is very hard to see at normal viewing sizes. If the image is a master you will edit again, keep the HEIF as the archive and treat the AVIF as a delivery copy.

Are AVIF and HEIF the same format?

They are container siblings, not the same format. The AVIF specification states that AVIF files are designed to be conformant HEIF files for both image items and image sequences, with extra constraints borrowed from MIAF. The difference is what the container holds: HEIF/HEIC carries HEVC-coded image data, AVIF carries AV1-coded data. That codec swap is also why AVIF is royalty-free while HEVC-based HEIF is not.

What does the "Very High" preset actually do?

It sets the encoder's quality parameter to 95 on a 0-100 scale. "Highest" uses 100, "High" 90, "Medium" 80, and so on down to 50 for "Lowest". Knowing the actual number is useful if you are matching output from another tool — a quality-95 AVIF from this page should sit in the same ballpark as a quality-95 AVIF produced elsewhere with the same encoder family.

Can I hit an exact output file size?

Yes, up to a point. Switch Image Compression from Quality Preset to "Specific file size" and enter a target in bytes, kilobytes, or megabytes. Auto Scale lets the converter reduce dimensions if the target is not reachable at full resolution. Note that the percentage-based size and quality sliders you may have seen on the compression tools are not offered on a conversion page — Quality Preset and Specific file size are the two modes here.

Does this page accept .heic files from my iPhone?

This converter is set up for .heif. iPhones normally write .heic, which is the same container with HEVC Main or Main Still Picture image data — same family, different brand and extension. If your files end in .heic, use HEIC to AVIF, which accepts that extension directly.

Why does AVIF have so much wider browser support than HEIF?

Licensing, mostly. HEVC carries patent royalties, which made browser vendors reluctant to ship a decoder. AV1 was published royalty-free by the Alliance for Open Media, so Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Samsung Internet adopted AVIF quickly, Safari followed in 16.4, and Edge in 121. Same container heritage, very different licensing — and licensing is what decided adoption.

Does converting to AVIF keep HDR, wide colour, and transparency?

AVIF supports HDR, wide-gamut colour, alpha transparency, depth maps, and layered images, so these properties can carry through rather than being flattened. Whether any given attribute survives depends on what the source HEIF actually stored and on the settings you pick. For ordinary photographs the result is faithful; if you need an exact colour-managed match, check the output on the display you are targeting.

How are my files handled and how long are they kept?

Your HEIF is uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and returned for download. Uploads are deleted automatically a few hours after conversion. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and nothing is shared or made public. On very large images the practical limit is upload size and time rather than anything in the conversion.