What a .HEIC file actually is
HEIC is the file extension Apple uses for HEIF — the High Efficiency Image Format. Since iOS 11 in 2017, iPhones have saved photos as HEIC by default instead of JPG. Inside the file, the actual image is compressed with HEVC (also called H.265), the same codec used for 4K video, which is what makes it so much smaller than a JPG.
The catch is support. Apple adopted HEIC years before the rest of the ecosystem, so a file that opens instantly on your iPhone or Mac can be unreadable on a Windows PC, on many Android phones, in older versions of Photoshop, or when you try to upload it to a website that only accepts JPG and PNG. The photo is fine — the software on the other end simply doesn't speak HEIC.
Why Apple switched away from JPG
HEIC isn't Apple being difficult for its own sake. At the same visual quality, a HEIC file is roughly half the size of the equivalent JPG, so your phone stores about twice as many photos in the same space. It also stores richer data than JPG can: 16-bit colour instead of 8-bit (far fewer visible bands in skies and gradients), transparency, image sequences like Live Photos, and depth maps for Portrait mode.
So HEIC is genuinely the better format — as long as everything that needs to read it supports it. The moment you leave Apple's walled garden — emailing a photo to a Windows user, uploading to an older web form, opening it in a tool that predates HEIC — that advantage becomes a compatibility wall.
Option 1: stop your iPhone making HEIC in the first place
If you'd rather not convert photos one by one, you can tell your iPhone to shoot JPG directly. Open Settings → Camera → Formats and choose "Most Compatible." From then on the camera captures JPG instead of HEIC, at a small cost in file size and colour depth.
This only affects new photos, though — every HEIC already in your library stays HEIC. And you lose the storage and quality benefits going forward. For most people the better approach is to leave the camera on "High Efficiency" and just convert the specific photos you need to share.
Option 2: convert the HEIC files you already have
To make a HEIC photo open anywhere, convert it to JPG — the most universally supported image format there is. Nothing you'd notice is lost: JPG can't hold HEIC's 16-bit colour or depth data, but for a normal photo you're sharing or printing, the visible result is identical.
If you specifically need transparency or a perfectly lossless copy for editing, convert to PNG instead — it's larger, but pixel-perfect. If you want a modern, small format for the web and know the destination supports it, WebP is a good middle ground. For everything else, JPG is the right default.
One thing worth checking before you convert: some tools upload your photo to a server to do the conversion. Your camera roll is personal, so prefer a converter that runs entirely in your browser and never uploads the file. GotConvert's HEIC converters work this way — the photo is decoded and re-encoded on your own device, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Which format should you convert to?
Match the format to what you're going to do with the photo. The wrong choice mostly costs you file size, but occasionally it costs you compatibility — an online form that wants JPG will reject a PNG just as firmly as it rejects a HEIC.
- Sharing, uploading, or printing a photo → convert HEIC to JPG. Smallest, opens everywhere.
- Editing, or you need transparency / a lossless master → convert HEIC to PNG. Larger, pixel-perfect.
- Modern web use where you control the destination → convert HEIC to WebP. Small and high quality, but not universally accepted.
- A document or an attachment for print → convert HEIC to PDF, which drops the photo straight into a page.