Why your iPhone photos won’t open
Your iPhone shoots HEIC by default. Apple switched to it back in iOS 11 because it packs the same photo into about half the space of a JPG. Smart for storage. Annoying everywhere else.
You email a HEIC to a coworker on Windows and it just sits there, undecoded. You drag one into an old web form and it bounces. WhatsApp, some printers, plenty of CMS uploaders, a lot of editing apps from a few years back: none of them speak HEIF. JPG is the format that opens on literally everything, so converting is usually the fastest way out.
This page does that conversion without sending your photo anywhere. The file is decoded and re-encoded right inside the browser tab using the heic2any library. No upload, no account, no server log with your beach pictures on it.
How to convert one
- Drop a
.heicor.heiffile onto the box, or click to pick one. - Nudge the quality slider. 85-92% is the sweet spot for phone photos.
- Hit Convert to JPG.
- Glance at the before and after sizes, then Download .jpg.
The slider feeds straight into JPG compression. Drop it to 60% and the file shrinks a lot, but you’ll start spotting mushy detail and blocky edges. Crank it to 100% and you keep almost everything at the cost of a bigger file. The size readout tells you exactly what each setting costs, so picking a number isn’t a shot in the dark.
A few things worth knowing
- Nothing leaves your device. The decode happens locally in the browser. Good for medical scans, passport photos, anything you’d rather not hand to a random web service.
- HEIC is usually smaller than the JPG you get back. That’s normal. HEIF is just a more efficient format, so reversing it often grows the file. Lower the quality slider if you need it small.
- Live Photos lose the motion. You get the still frame, not the little video clip attached to it.
- One photo at a time. Convert, hit New File, drop the next. For a folder of 300 shots you’d want a desktop batch tool.
- Some files just won’t decode. A handful of HEIC variants, like depth-map HEVC captures or certain edited exports, choke the converter. When that happens you’ll get a clear error instead of a blank download.
Got the JPG? Run it through the Image Compressor if you want to trim a few more kilobytes, or the Image Resizer to fit a specific upload limit.
FAQ
Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
Nope. The whole thing runs in your browser using JavaScript. Close the tab and there’s no copy left on any server, because one was never made.
Will the photo look worse after converting?
Barely, at sensible settings. JPG is lossy, so re-encoding sheds a little data, but at 90% the change is invisible on a normal photo. Below 70% you’ll start to notice softness on fine detail.
My JPG came out bigger than the HEIC. Is that a bug?
No, that’s expected. Apple’s HEIF format compresses tighter than JPG does, so going back the other way often costs you size. Slide the quality down if you need a smaller result.
The converter says it couldn’t decode my file. Now what?
Some HEIC variants (depth captures, certain Live Photo edits) aren’t supported by the in-browser decoder. The simplest fix: open the photo in the Photos app, export or duplicate it, then convert that copy.
Does this work on a phone?
Yep. It runs the same on mobile Safari and Chrome as it does on a laptop, so you can convert a photo straight from your camera roll.
Can I convert several HEIC files at once?
This handles a single image per run. It’s built for grabbing one or two shots fast, not bulk dumps. For hundreds of files, a native app on your machine will be quicker.