HEIC to JPG: why iPhone photos will not open on Windows and Android

Every photo an iPhone has taken since 2017 is stored as HEIC unless you changed a setting. It is a good format — roughly half the size of a JPG at the same quality — but it is licensed, so Windows, Android and every browser except Safari refuse to open it. You share a photo, the other person sees a broken icon.

The one-step fix

Convert the HEIC to JPG. JPG opens on everything made in the last twenty-five years. Drop the file on Convert Files, leave the target on .jpg (it is the default for HEIC), press Convert. The first time in Chrome a small decoder is fetched; after that it is instant.

For a photo you plan to edit further, choose .png instead: it is lossless, so nothing is thrown away before your edits. For a photo going into a document, choose .docx and you get a Word file with the picture already placed.

Stopping it at the source

If you would rather the phone never made HEIC files at all: Settings › Camera › Formats › Most Compatible. Photos will take about twice the space, which is the trade-off.

What about quality?

HEIC to JPG is lossy to lossy, so keep the quality slider at 90% or above. At that setting the difference is invisible; the file is simply a bit larger than the HEIC was.

Why Apple moved to HEIC in the first place

HEIC is a HEIF container holding images coded with HEVC, the same compression used for 4K video. Roughly speaking it stores the same photograph at half the size of a JPG at the same visible quality, which on a 128 GB phone is thousands of extra pictures. It also does things JPG simply cannot: 10 bits per colour channel instead of 8, so skies and skin tones step more smoothly; an alpha channel; a depth map from Portrait mode; and several images in one file, which is how burst shots and Live Photos are stored.

None of that is the problem. The problem is that a format being better is not the same as a format being openable.

Why Windows and Android choke on them

HEVC is patent-encumbered. The licensing is split across more than one patent pool, and the practical result is that companies who would have to pay for a decoder mostly do not ship one. Windows 10 and 11 can display HEIC only if the HEVC Video Extensions are installed from the Microsoft Store, which is a paid add-on for most people. Android has supported HEIF in the framework since version 9, but individual apps and older handsets often still refuse. Chrome, Firefox and Edge do not decode HEIC at all — Safari is the exception, because Apple ships the decoder.

So the file is fine. The photo inside it is fine. Everything that would open it is what is missing, and you usually cannot install your way out of that on someone else's computer.

What you lose in the conversion, honestly

A JPG is one 8-bit image and nothing else, so anything HEIC was carrying alongside the picture does not survive. In practice that means the depth map behind Portrait mode blur, the HDR gain map some newer iPhones write, and the extra colour precision of 10-bit. For an ordinary photograph you will not see the difference. For a picture you intend to grade or push hard in an editor, it is a real loss — convert to PNG instead, which is lossless, and keep the HEIC original.

Live Photos are worth a note of their own. The moving part is not inside the HEIC; it is a separate MOV file that the phone keeps paired with it. Converting the still image does not, and cannot, take the motion with it. If you want the movement, export the video separately.

Converting a whole camera roll

Select as many HEIC files as you like in one go — the converter works through them one after another and offers a zip of the results at the end. There is no per-file wait and no queue, because nothing is being uploaded to wait behind anyone else's job. A few hundred photos on a normal laptop takes a couple of minutes.

HEIC, HEIF, HEVC: which is which

HEIF is the container format. HEVC (also called H.265) is the compression used for the picture inside it. HEIC is the name Apple uses for the combination, and it is the extension you see on the phone. When Windows asks you to install “HEVC Video Extensions” to open a photo, this is why — it needs the video decoder to read the still image.