Convert HEIC to JPEG

Key takeaways

• Your photos never leave the device: libheif, compiled to WebAssembly, decodes the HEIC in the browser and the browser's encoder saves the JPEG.
• It is fast enough for phone photos: 0.5 s to 1.8 s per picture for 5.6 MP to 14.9 MP in our tests, including the first start of the engine.
• The default is JPEG at 92% quality. On our test files that gave 0.37× to 1.98× the HEIC size, so the JPEG is not always bigger.
• The decode matches an independent reference: no color channel differed by more than 13 out of 255, and the average difference was under 0.4.
• The date, location and camera details are not copied into the new file, and color profiles are not converted.

JPEG or JPG: is there a difference?

No. JPG and JPEG are the same format with two spellings of the extension. Older Windows versions limited extensions to three letters, which is where .jpg comes from; the file inside is identical. This page saves the file with the .jpg extension, and every program that opens .jpeg opens it. If a form insists on the .jpeg spelling, rename the file after downloading it.

Measured: how long decoding takes

Measured in headless Chromium with the converter's own code: libheif 1.23 compiled to WebAssembly decodes the file, then the browser's canvas encoder saves it, as in the converter on this page. We had no phone files we could publish, so the HEIC files were made from three public domain NASA scans (a 3840 × 3877 photo, a 2122 × 2644 portrait and a 3827 × 1588 document scan) with libheif's HEVC encoder at three quality settings. A real iPhone file is encoded differently, so its size will differ. SSIM compares each result with an independent decode of the same HEIC file (1.0 would be identical).

Decoding took 0.5 s to 1.8 s for 5.6 MP to 14.9 MP pictures. A phone photo of 12 megapixels sits inside that range. Your device will differ, and phones are usually slower than a desktop.

Measured: JPEG size at each quality

Against the HEIC they came from, the 92% JPEGs were between 0.37× and 1.98× the size. The change depends on how hard the HEIC was compressed in the first place, so do not expect a fixed ratio.

Measured: is the decoded picture right?

The decoder was checked against a second, independent decode of the same files (the Python package pillow-heif, which also uses libheif). Every pixel of every color channel was compared.

The largest single-pixel difference was 13 out of 255 and the average was under 0.4. Differences like this come from how two builds round the final conversion from the HEVC color format to RGB. Lossless PNG output of the 75 quality files scored SSIM 0.9999 or better against the reference.

HEIC vs JPEG

What you get

A JPEG at 92% quality; transparent areas become white. JPEG and JPG are the same format; this is the same conversion as HEIC to JPG.

Which quality to choose

• 92% (the default) for sharing and archiving: the JPEGs scored SSIM 0.981 or better against the decoded picture.
• 100% only if a later edit needs it: it was 2.3 to 3.4 times the size of 92% for SSIM gains of about 0.02.
• 80% for email and messaging: 2.68 MB instead of 3.58 MB for the 14.9 MP photo.
• If you need a specific file size, convert here and then use the image size tool.

Free tools:Compress an image to a target sizeCompress an image to 200 KBHEIC to PNGHEIC to WebP

Make the iPhone save JPEG in the first place

Apple's support page says iPhones from the iPhone 7 on, and several iPad models, can capture photos in HEIF, and that the more compatible older formats are available: in Settings, Camera, Formats, choose Most Compatible, and new photos are saved as JPEG.

The same page says that when you import photos from an iPhone or iPad over USB into Photos, Image Capture or a PC, the media might be converted to JPEG, and that Settings, Photos, Keep Originals turns that conversion off. It also says AirDrop, Messages or email can send a more compatible format when the receiving device does not support the newer one.

What the conversion leaves behind

The converter reads the picture from the HEIC and writes new pixels. That is why the file carries no date or location. It is also why anything that is not an ordinary picture is not carried over, such as the video part of a Live Photo, which is stored separately by Apple's apps. If you need those, keep the original HEIC.

Questions people ask

More converters

• JPG to JPEG
• PNG to JPEG
• WebP to JPEG
• HEIC to JPG
• HEIC to PNG
• HEIC to WebP

Sources and how we checked

1. MDN: Media container formats
2. MDN: Web audio codec guide
3. MDN: Image file type and format guide
4. FFmpeg documentation: stream copy
5. Apple Support: Using HEIF or HEVC media on Apple devices (read 2026-10-09)
6. libheif (strukturag) README: HEIF and AVIF decoder and encoder (read 2026-10-09)
7. MDN: Image file type and format guide (read 2026-10-09)
8. Wikimedia Commons: NASA public domain photographs used to make the test files (read 2026-10-09)

Reviewed October 8, 2026. What the converter writes was measured with ffprobe on the same FFmpeg build your browser downloads; format descriptions follow MDN's media guides.