HEIC photos: what they are and how to open them
If someone sent you a photo that ends in .heic and nothing on your computer will open it, the file is fine. It is a newer format that Apple switched to by default in 2017, and much of the rest of the world has not caught up.
What HEIC actually is
HEIC is Apple's name for an image stored in the HEIF container using HEVC (H.265) compression, the same codec used for 4K video. Every iPhone since iOS 11 saves photos this way when the camera is set to High Efficiency, which is the default.
The reason is size. A HEIC photo is typically around half the size of a JPEG of the same visual quality. On a phone that takes thousands of photos, that is a lot of storage and a lot of iCloud quota.
It can also hold things JPEG cannot: 10-bit colour, a depth map for Portrait mode, and several images in one file. A Live Photo is a HEIC still paired with a short MOV video.
Who can open it
| Where | Opens HEIC? |
|---|---|
| iPhone, iPad, Mac | Yes, natively |
| Safari 17 and newer | Yes |
| Windows 10 and 11 | Only after installing HEIF and HEVC extensions from the Microsoft Store |
| Android | Most recent phones, in the gallery app |
| Chrome, Firefox, Edge | No |
| Most web upload forms | No — they usually reject it or show a broken image |
That last row is the one that hurts. Job applications, government portals, print shops and online stores routinely accept only JPG and PNG. The file is not damaged; the site simply cannot read it.
Converting without making it worse
Converting HEIC to JPG is a re-encode: the HEVC data is decoded to pixels and then compressed again as JPEG. Two things follow from that.
- The JPG will be bigger. Expect roughly one and a half to two times the HEIC size at a quality that looks the same. That is not the converter doing a bad job; it is JPEG being an older, less efficient codec.
- Quality 85–92 is the right range. Above that you pay a lot of bytes for nothing visible. Below about 75 you start to see blocking in skies and skin. Our HEIC to JPG converter starts at 90.
Convert once, from the original. Converting a HEIC to JPG, then editing and saving the JPG again, compresses it twice. If you need to crop or resize, do it in the same session and save a single time.
If you need transparency or want an exact copy with no compression at all, convert to PNG instead with the image converter. It will be much larger, but nothing is lost.
Check the location data before you share
An iPhone photo usually records the GPS position it was taken at, to within a few metres. A converter that carries the metadata across — most of them do, deliberately, so you do not lose the date and camera settings — carries the location across too.
If the photo was taken at home and is going anywhere public, open it in the EXIF viewer first, and strip what you do not want to share with the metadata remover. Our guide to EXIF privacy covers what else is in there.
Stopping the iPhone from saving HEIC
You have two options, and one of them is usually better.
- Keep HEIC, convert on transfer. In Settings → Photos, set Transfer to Mac or PC to Automatic. The phone keeps the small files and hands a computer a JPG when you copy them over a cable. Sharing through most apps also converts automatically.
- Switch the camera to JPEG. In Settings → Camera → Formats, choose Most Compatible. Every new photo is a JPEG from then on. You lose the storage saving and nothing else.
The first option is the better default: you keep the space saving and only convert the handful of photos that actually need to go somewhere that cannot read HEIC. Neither setting changes photos you have already taken.
When not to convert
If the photo is only ever going to live on Apple devices, in iCloud, or in Google Photos (which reads HEIC), leave it alone. Converting a whole library to JPG roughly doubles its size and slightly lowers its quality, for no benefit. Convert the individual files that need to leave the Apple world, at the moment they need to.