HEIC to JPG Converter

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You AirDrop or upload a photo from your iPhone and get "unsupported file type." That photo is almost certainly a .HEIC file — Apple's default format since iOS 11 — and the fix takes ten seconds. Here's what's actually going on, and how to stop hitting this problem altogether.

Why iPhones use HEIC in the first place

HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) is Apple's implementation of HEIF, a format built around the same compression technology as modern video codecs. It typically stores a photo at roughly half the file size of an equivalent JPG at similar quality — which is genuinely useful when you're shooting hundreds of photos on limited phone storage or an iCloud plan. Apple made it the default camera format starting with iOS 11 for exactly that reason. The trade-off is compatibility: HEIC is much newer and far less universally supported than JPG, which has been the web and photography standard for three decades.

Where HEIC causes problems

• Windows. File Explorer and most Windows apps can't preview or open HEIC without installing an extra codec pack.
• Web uploads. Many websites — job portals, government forms, older ecommerce platforms, some social apps — simply reject .heic files outright.
• Printing services. Most photo printing kiosks and online print labs expect JPG or PNG.
• Older Android devices and some email clients may show a broken image icon instead of the photo.
• Sharing with non-Apple users. If AirDrop or iMessage isn't involved, HEIC often doesn't get auto-converted, so the recipient just sees a file they can't open.

Stop this from happening again

If you're regularly running into this, you can change what format your iPhone camera saves in going forward: open Settings → Camera → Formats and switch from "High Efficiency" to "Most Compatible". Your phone will then save new photos directly as JPG, at the cost of somewhat larger files. This doesn't affect photos you've already taken — those will still need converting individually, which is exactly what this tool is for.

Other "new" formats you might run into

HEIC isn't the only modern format causing compatibility headaches. WebP, developed by Google, is common on websites and increasingly supported everywhere, including by this site's own tools. AVIF is newer still and even more efficient, but has the least universal support of the three. The pattern is the same for all of them: newer formats compress better, but older software, some printing services, and some upload forms haven't caught up yet. Converting to JPG remains the most broadly compatible fallback for any of them when something refuses to accept the original.

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