HEIF to JPG Converter

HEIF vs JPG — Which One Should You Actually Keep?

HEIF is the high-efficiency image format Apple devices capture by default, and it is genuinely better than JPG at almost everything except the one thing that matters most day to day: opening anywhere. If your photos are staying inside Apple Photos, leave them as HEIF. If they need to reach Windows, an older photo editor, a print shop, a job application form or a website upload field, convert them to JPG — that is what this page does, and the short version below explains exactly what you trade away.

Side-by-side Comparison

When HEIF Is Worth Keeping

• You stay inside Apple's ecosystem. iPhone, iPad, Mac and iCloud Photos all handle HEIF natively, and you get the smaller files for free.
• You care about HDR and 10-bit colour. Those are the two things a standard JPG physically cannot store, so converting is a one-way loss.
• You are archiving originals. HEIF is the closest thing you have to what the sensor and the image pipeline produced, so keep it as the master copy and convert copies as needed.

When to Convert to JPG

• Something refuses to open the file. Windows without the Store codec extensions, older Photoshop and Lightroom versions, most Android gallery apps and nearly every web upload form.
• You are putting the picture on a website. Chrome, Firefox and Edge do not decode HEIF at all, so a HEIF <img> is a broken image for most of your visitors.
• You are emailing, printing or filing it. Print labs, government portals and application forms almost universally specify JPEG.
• You need a predictable file size. JPG's quality scale is well understood and this page can also target an exact file size for you.

How to Convert HEIF to JPG

1. Upload Your HEIF Files: Drag and drop your .heif files onto the page or click "+ Add Files". A whole batch can be queued and converted with the same settings.
2. Set the Quality Preset: Under Image Compression, the Quality Preset dropdown starts on "Very High (Recommended)". Drop it if you want smaller files, or switch to Specific file size if you have a hard upload limit to hit.
3. Set Image Resolution and Background Color (Optional): Image resolution is on "Keep original" — switch it to a percentage, a preset or an exact Width x Height to shrink the picture. Background Color (White by default) is the colour any transparency gets flattened onto, since JPG has no alpha channel.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save the JPG. Use the File extension control if you want the file named .jpeg rather than .jpg. No sign-up, no watermark.

What the Quality Preset Actually Sets

The preset maps to a JPEG quality value, and every output is written with optimized Huffman coding, which shaves a few percent off the file for free without touching image quality.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will I lose quality converting HEIF to JPG?

Some, unavoidably. JPG is an 8-bit lossy format, so HEIF's 10-bit colour, HDR, any alpha channel and any depth or burst data are discarded, and the picture is re-encoded with JPEG compression. At the default Very High preset the encoder writes at JPEG quality 95, which for a normal photograph is visually indistinguishable from the source on screen. Keep the HEIF as your master copy and treat the JPG as a distribution copy.

Why is my JPG larger than the HEIF it came from?

Because HEVC intra coding, which is what HEIF uses, is simply a more efficient still-image codec than the 1990s DCT scheme JPEG uses — Apple's own rationale for adopting HEIF is that it stores comparable quality in roughly half the bytes. Getting the same picture out as a JPG at quality 95 therefore usually costs more space, not less. If size matters more than fidelity, drop the preset to High or Medium, or use the Specific file size option.

What is the difference between HEIF and HEIC, and does this page take both?

HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format, ISO/IEC 23008-12) is the container; HEIC is the name used when the images inside are HEVC-encoded, which is what Apple has shipped on iPhone since iOS 11 in 2017. Every HEIC is a HEIF, but HEIF can also wrap other codecs such as AV1. This page is wired to the .heif extension — if your files come off an iPhone as .heic, use HEIC to JPG instead.

Does the JPG keep the capture date, camera model and GPS location?

This conversion does not ask for metadata to be stripped, so EXIF fields normally carry into the JPG. That is usually what you want for a photo library, but it does mean GPS coordinates can travel with a picture you post publicly. If that matters, remove the location data in Photos (Share sheet, "Options", turn off Location) before converting, or strip it from the JPG afterwards.

What happens to HDR photos?

They come out as ordinary SDR JPGs. A standard JPEG has no mechanism for storing HDR gain information, so that data is simply discarded — no tone-mapping is applied — and the picture will look flatter in the highlights than the HEIF does on an HDR display. There is no setting that avoids this — it is a hard limit of the target format, and the only way to keep HDR is to keep the HEIF.

Will transparency survive the conversion?

No, because JPG has no alpha channel. Any transparent area is flattened onto the Background Color, which is White by default with 24 other named colours available. Camera photos are fully opaque so this never comes up for them, but it matters for exported graphics and stickers. If you need to keep the alpha channel, convert to HEIF to PNG instead.

Can I hit an exact file size for an upload limit?

Yes. Instead of a Quality Preset, choose Specific file size and enter your target in bytes, kilobytes or megabytes. Auto Scale lets the converter reduce the pixel dimensions as well as the quality when the target is too small to reach by re-compression alone — useful when a form insists on something like 500 KB from a 12-megapixel photo.

Does it matter whether I pick .jpg or .jpeg?

Not to the image — the bytes are identical and both extensions describe the same JPEG file. The File extension control exists purely because some systems, particularly older upload validators and a few print-lab submission tools, only whitelist one spelling. Pick whichever the receiving system asks for.

How do I stop my iPhone producing HEIF files in the first place?

Open Settings, then Camera, then Formats, and choose "Most Compatible". New photos are captured as JPEG from then on. Photos already in your library stay HEIF, so you will still need a converter for the existing ones — and note that "High Efficiency" is the setting that gives you the smaller files, so many people leave it on and convert only what they need to share.

What happens to my photos after conversion?

They are uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and both the uploads and the outputs are deleted automatically a few hours later. No sign-up, no watermark, and nothing is ever shared or made public. On a large batch the practical constraint is upload time rather than anything in the conversion itself.