Why Your iPhone Photos Are HEIC, and How to Get JPEGs Instead

You send a photo from your iPhone and it arrives as a file ending in .heic. A Windows laptop won't preview it, a job portal rejects the upload, and the print shop asks for something else. Nothing is wrong with the photo. It's saved in a format a lot of software still won't open.

Why the iPhone uses HEIC

iPhones have saved photos as HEIC by default since iOS 11. A HEIC file is roughly half the size of a JPEG of the same quality, which adds up fast on a phone full of photos. Apple's own apps open it without any fuss. Plenty of other software doesn't: older Windows setups, many web upload forms, and a lot of print and office tools.

Convert the photos you already have

On a Mac, open the photo in Preview, choose File → Export and pick JPEG. That's fine for one or two.

For a batch, use the Kusiima Image Converter. Drop in a folder of HEICs and the JPEGs come back as a single zip. The conversion happens in your browser, so the photos never leave your computer. It also leaves location and camera details behind, which is worth having before you send a photo to someone you don't know.

Let the iPhone convert as it copies

When you copy photos to a computer over a cable, go to Settings → Photos and check that Transfer to Mac or PC is set to Automatic. The iPhone then converts each photo to JPEG as it copies.

Stop saving HEIC altogether

Go to Settings → Camera → Formats and choose Most Compatible. New photos are saved as JPEG from then on. The trade-off is space: each photo takes up about twice as much, and some video modes, such as 4K at 60 fps, only work with High Efficiency.

For most people the better option is to keep HEIC on the phone and convert only when a file has to go somewhere that won't take it.