Why iPhone photos won't open
HEIC is Apple's default camera format since iOS 11, chosen because it compresses noticeably better than JPEG at the same visual quality — the same photo takes roughly half the storage. That efficiency comes from a codec built into Apple's operating systems, and support for it elsewhere is inconsistent at best. The result is a photo that opens perfectly on the iPhone that took it and then fails the moment it lands almost anywhere else: a Windows PC, an older Android phone, most upload forms, a lot of photo software.
Where HEIC actually works, and where it does not
| Where the photo lands | Opens HEIC? |
|---|---|
| macOS, iOS, iPadOS | Natively, no issue |
| Windows 10 / 11 | Only after installing a separate codec extension |
| Older Windows, most Android | Not supported |
| Web upload forms, job/marketplace sites | Usually rejected outright |
| Older photo editing software | Frequently unsupported |
The Windows codec extension is real and does work, but it requires knowing it exists, finding it in the Microsoft Store, and installing it — not something most people discover until a photo has already failed to open. Converting to JPG sidesteps the whole problem: every device, every website and every piece of software from the last twenty years opens a JPG without a second thought.
What the file size change means
HEIC's whole reason for existing is better compression, so converting to JPG almost always makes the file larger, sometimes by a wide margin. This is normal and expected, not a sign anything went wrong — you are trading a more efficient format for one that is universally compatible. If storage space matters more than compatibility, there is little reason to convert HEIC files you can already open.
JPG is the sensible default for compatibility, but PNG is available too. Both are lossy re-encodes of an already-lossy HEIC source, so there is a small quality cost either way; at the maximum quality setting here it is not visible in normal viewing.
HEIC, HEIF, and Live Photos
HEIF is the general container format; HEIC is specifically Apple's photo flavor of it, and both decode the same way here. Live Photos are a separate case worth knowing about: a Live Photo is actually two files bundled together — a HEIC still image plus a few seconds of video. Converting handles the still photo; the motion clip is a different file entirely and was never something a photo converter touches.
A whole camera roll at once
Drop in as many HEIC files as you have and each one converts on its own, with a single ZIP download once they are all done — useful for a phone backup or an export of an entire camera roll rather than one photo at a time. There is no file count limit, because nothing is being uploaded to a server that would need to handle the load.
Nothing is uploaded
Both the decoding and the re-encoding happen entirely inside your browser. The photos never leave your device, which matters more here than for most files people convert — these are personal pictures, often the exact ones you were trying to avoid uploading anywhere in the first place.