How to convert HEIC to JPG on Windows — and stop your iPhone making them

Why iPhone photos are .heic

Apple's support document is explicit about it: on an iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus and later running iOS 11 or later, photos are captured as HEIF and video as HEVC. The files usually end in .heic. The point is compression — the same picture at the same visual quality in noticeably less storage, which adds up over a few thousand photos on a phone.

The trouble starts once the photo leaves the phone. Windows needs a codec before it can open one, and browsers cannot read the format at all. So the upload form, the job application portal or an older editor tells you the file type isn't supported. There are two ways out: stop the phone producing HEIC, or convert the files you already have.

The cleanest fix — make the iPhone shoot JPEG

If these files keep arriving, deal with the cause. Apple's documented path is short:

1. 1On the iPhone, open Settings and tap Camera.
2. 2Tap Formats.
3. 3Tap Most Compatible. From now on photos are JPEG and video is H.264.

If you would rather keep HEIF on the phone and only get JPEGs on the PC, there is a separate transfer setting. Apple's path is Settings → Apps → Photos, then scroll down to Keep Originals. With Keep Originals off, importing over USB hands the PC a compatible format instead of the original HEIC; with it on, the .heic files come across untouched. On some iOS versions the same option sits directly under Settings → Photos.

Why renaming to .jpg does nothing

This is the most common false start. The extension is a label; what decides the format is the data inside the file. Renaming IMG_0001.HEIC to IMG_0001.jpg leaves the inside exactly as it was.

I checked it rather than assumed it. A HEIC file written by Windows starts with ftypheic, and a copy renamed to .jpg starts with exactly the same bytes. Windows itself still picks the Microsoft HEIF Decoder for the renamed file. Viewers sniff the contents, so the file opens fine and you think it worked — until something that validates the format looks inside and says no.

One or two files — Photos or Paint

Paint and the Photos app on Windows 11 both register HEIC as a format they handle. On the PC used for this guide, the installed app manifests list .heic and .heif alongside .jpg, .png, .webp and .avif (Paint 11.2605.81.0, Photos 2026.11080.24002.0).

1. 1Right-click the .heic file and choose Open with → Paint.
2. 2File → Save as → JPEG picture.
3. 3Pick a location and save. The original .heic stays where it was.

In the Photos app it is the same idea: the menu in the top right has Save as, where you can switch the type to JPG. It is clumsy for dozens of files, but for one or two it is the fastest thing available.

When it won't open — the two extensions

If Explorer shows a blank icon instead of a thumbnail, or an app says the format isn't supported, the codec is missing. HEIF Image Extension from the Microsoft Store is the free piece that adds it.

There is a second hurdle. The image inside a HEIC file is compressed with HEVC, so depending on the machine you may also need HEVC Video Extensions, which the Store sells for a small amount — though plenty of PCs ship with a manufacturer-provided copy already installed. The PC used for this guide had Microsoft.HEIFImageExtension 1.2.48 and Microsoft.HEVCVideoExtension 2.5.33 in place, and with both present the conversions below worked.

A whole folder — PowerShell

Opening fifty files by hand is not a plan. Windows ships with an imaging stack (WIC) that PowerShell can call directly, so there is nothing to install. Paste this into a PowerShell window and every .heic in the folder is written out as a JPG next to it.

Add-Type -AssemblyName PresentationCore

Get-ChildItem "C:\Users\you\Pictures\*.heic" | ForEach-Object {
    $f = [System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapDecoder]::Create([Uri]$_.FullName, 'None', 'OnLoad').Frames[0]
    $e = New-Object System.Windows.Media.Imaging.JpegBitmapEncoder
    $e.QualityLevel = 90
    $e.Frames.Add($f)
    $o = [System.IO.File]::Create([IO.Path]::ChangeExtension($_.FullName, '.jpg'))
    $e.Save($o); $o.Close()
}

Change the path and that is the whole job. Nothing is deleted — the .heic stays and a .jpg appears beside it. Running it for this guide, a 75,897-byte HEIC came out as a 59,241-byte JPEG at quality 90, and the decoder Windows reported for the source was Microsoft HEIF Decoder.

What online converters are really doing

Nearly every "HEIC to JPG" site uploads your photo to a server, and there is a technical reason for it: browsers cannot decode HEIC. Loading a HEIC into an img element in Chrome leaves it at 0×0, and asking JavaScript to decode the same file fails with InvalidStateError: The source image could not be decoded. Client-side conversion — the kind where the file never leaves your machine — simply isn't possible for this format today.

So using an online HEIC converter means handing your photo to someone else's server. For a landscape shot, fine. For photos of people, ID documents or contracts, use one of the offline routes above. The image converter on this site is client-side only, which is exactly why it cannot accept HEIC — convert to JPG first with Paint or PowerShell, then use it to shrink the result or move it to PNG or WebP.

After the conversion

Expect bigger files. HEIC is the more efficient format, so the JPEG of the same picture is usually larger — Apple describes HEIF and HEVC as keeping the same visual quality at higher compression. If size is the goal, resizing the photo does far more than changing the format.

Expect a little quality loss. Both formats are lossy, so converting re-compresses an already compressed picture. At quality 90 that is hard to spot, but converting a converted file again is worth avoiding — which is another reason to keep the original .heic for a while.

Live Photos become a single frame. A JPEG holds one still image, so the short motion around the shot does not survive the conversion. If you need the movement, export it as a video from the phone instead.

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