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HEIC to JPG converter

Turn iPhone photos into JPGs that open on anything. The conversion runs inside this page — your photos are never uploaded.

  • 0 uploads
  • No limits
  • No signup
  • Works offline

What this actually does

Your iPhone records photos as HEIC, a container built on the HEVC video codec. It is genuinely clever compression — the same image at roughly half the bytes of a JPEG. It is also the reason a photo you emailed to a colleague arrived as a file their laptop refused to open.

This page decodes HEIC with libheif, compiled to WebAssembly, running in a Web Worker inside your own browser. The decoded pixels are then re-encoded as JPEG with MozJPEG, the encoder Mozilla built to squeeze more quality out of the same byte budget. Both steps happen on the processor in front of you. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is queued, and nothing is stored.

That architecture is the whole product. It is why there is no size cap, no daily allowance and no paid tier: converting your thousandth file costs us exactly what converting your first one did, which is nothing.

Who ends up here

Three groups, mostly:

  • People sending photos to someone on Windows or Android. HEIC support on Windows requires a codec pack from the Microsoft Store that many people never install, so the file simply will not open.
  • People filling in an online form. Visa applications, university portals, job boards, tax filings and insurance claims almost universally accept JPG and PNG only. A HEIC upload is rejected without much of an explanation.
  • People archiving photos. JPEG is the most durable image format there is. In twenty years it will still open on anything with a screen; HEIC’s future is less certain.

If you are in the second group, you will probably also hit a file-size limit on the form. The result screen lets you send the converted JPG straight into our image compressor — including its exact-size mode, which is built for “attachment must be under 200 KB” instructions.

Quality, honestly

Converting HEIC to JPG is a lossy-to-lossy transcode. Some information is lost. How much depends on the quality setting:

Quality Typical 12 MP photo Visible difference
100 4–6 MB none, but wasteful
90 (default) 1.5–2.5 MB none at normal viewing size
80 0.8–1.4 MB none unless you zoom in
70 0.5–0.9 MB faint softening in fine detail
60 0.3–0.6 MB visible on skin and gradients

For anything you will print or edit further, stay at 90 or above. For email and web use, 80 is a sensible default that most people cannot tell apart from the original.

About the metadata

HEIC files from a phone carry a lot more than pixels: GPS coordinates, the exact capture time, the camera model, lens, exposure settings, and sometimes the name you gave your device. By default this converter drops all of it, and the JPEG you get out contains image data only.

If you would rather keep the camera and date information, tick the box before converting — but be aware that on a JPEG source this also carries the location across. If you want to see exactly what a photo is currently revealing, our EXIF viewer will show you, including a map link for the GPS tag.

Compared with an upload-based converter

Filestay Typical online converter
Where your file goes stays in this tab uploaded to a server
File size limit none commonly 5–100 MB on free tiers
Files per batch limited by your RAM commonly 2–20
Daily limit none common on free tiers
Works offline yes, once installed no
Waiting for upload none proportional to your connection
Account required no often

The one thing a server-side converter can do that we cannot is use more compute than your device has. For a 48-megapixel batch on a five-year-old phone, that occasionally matters. For everything else, doing the work locally is simply faster, because the slowest part of a cloud converter is almost always the upload.

How it works

  1. 01Add your HEIC filesDrag them onto the box, click to browse, paste with Ctrl/Cmd+V, or drop a whole folder. Batches of a hundred are fine.
  2. 02Conversion starts on its ownThere is no “start” button. Each file is decoded by a WebAssembly build of libheif running in a background thread, so the page never freezes.
  3. 03Adjust quality if you want toThe default is 90, which is visually indistinguishable from the original for almost every photo. Lower it if you need smaller files.
  4. 04DownloadSave files one by one, or grab everything as a single .zip. The zip is also built on your device.

Questions people actually ask

Is this safe for personal photos?
Yes, and you can verify it rather than take our word for it. Open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and convert a file. You will see no request carrying your image — because there is no server involved. The decoder is a WebAssembly module that runs inside your own browser tab.
Is there a file size or file count limit?
No. Limits on other converters exist because someone has to pay for the bandwidth and CPU. Here the work happens on your machine, so our cost per conversion is zero and there is nothing to ration. Very large batches are bounded only by your device’s memory.
Why is my iPhone saving photos as HEIC in the first place?
Apple switched the default camera format to HEIC in iOS 11 (2017). HEIC stores the same picture in roughly half the space of a JPEG by using the HEVC video codec for still images. The trade-off is compatibility: many Windows apps, older Android phones, web forms and printing services still cannot open it.
Will I lose quality converting to JPG?
A little, unavoidably — HEIC and JPEG are both lossy, so you are re-encoding. At quality 90 the difference is invisible at normal viewing sizes. If you need a mathematically lossless copy, convert to PNG instead, at the cost of a much larger file.
Does it work offline?
Yes. Install Filestay from your browser’s address bar and the converter keeps working with no connection at all. This is genuinely useful on a plane, in a hotel with captive-portal Wi-Fi, or anywhere you would rather not put a passport scan on someone else’s network.
What happens to the EXIF data?
By default it is dropped, including GPS coordinates. That is deliberate: a holiday photo posted online with intact EXIF tells a stranger the exact street you were standing on. If you need the camera and date information kept, tick “Keep EXIF metadata” before converting.
Some of my files failed. Why?
The most common cause is a Live Photo exported as a HEIC container with an unusual encoding, or a 10-bit HDR capture that uses a HEVC profile the decoder does not yet cover. Opening the photo in Apple Photos and exporting it as “Most Compatible” will produce a file that converts cleanly.
Can I convert HEIC to PDF instead?
Yes — use HEIC to PDF to put one or more photos onto pages, or convert to JPG here and then chain into the PDF maker with a single click from the result screen.

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