Why your iPhone saves photos as HEIC
Since iOS 11 in 2017, the iPhone camera’s default “High Efficiency” setting has saved photos as HEIC: a HEIF image (an MPEG standard, ISO/IEC 23008-12) compressed with HEVC, the codec behind modern video. A HEIC photo is typically around half the size of a comparable JPEG.
The catch appears once a photo leaves Apple’s devices. Chrome, Edge and Firefox can’t display HEIC on desktop or Android, many job, rental and school upload forms turn .heic files away, and friends on Windows or Android may not be able to open your attachment. Safari 17 and later handle HEIC fine, so the problem is easy to miss until someone else tries. JPG opens everywhere.
Batch convert a camera-roll export in four steps
- Add your photos. Drag in HEIC files or a whole folder (subfolders included), or paste from the clipboard. The .MOV files that come with an export are recognized and skipped.
- Set quality and size. Quality 92 at original size suits most uses; pick a 1920 px long edge for email or uploads.
- Choose what photo info to keep: everything (the default), everything except the GPS location, or nothing.
- Convert and download files one by one, or all at once with “Download all (ZIP)”.
Each batch takes up to 500 files, with no sign-up, watermark or daily cap, and two to four background workers convert them in parallel depending on your device. IMG_1234.HEIC becomes IMG_1234.jpg; a duplicate name gets “ (2)” added. ZIP entries are stored without recompression and timestamped with each photo’s capture time, so unzipped files sort by date taken.
What the quality slider means: 92 vs 80 vs 100
JPG is lossy, and converting from HEIC always means one round of re-encoding. The quality number, from 50 to 100, sets how much fine detail is traded for a smaller file:
| Setting | What you’ll see | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | The largest files; still lossy, and rarely worth it over 92 | Hardly ever; for lossless output use HEIC to PNG |
| 92 (default) | Very hard to tell from the original, even zoomed in | Keeping copies, prints, editing later |
| 80 | Noticeably smaller; zoomed in, smooth skies and fine texture can show faint blockiness | Email, messaging, web forms, listings |
| 50–70 | The smallest files, with artifacts visible on a large screen | Only when an upload limit forces it |
Expect your JPGs to be larger than the HEIC originals. When size matters, resizing to a 1920 px long edge usually helps more than lowering quality, and the result still fills a Full HD screen.
Date taken, location and color survive the trip
EXIF data is kept by default: date taken, camera and lens, exposure settings and GPS location, so converted photos land on the right day when you import them into a library app. The orientation tag is reset to “normal” because the pixels are already rotated upright, so nothing shows up sideways.
Before posting publicly, think about location: photos taken at home or of something you’re selling carry coordinates anyone can read. Remove GPS location deletes the GPS block and zeroes the coordinates but keeps the date and camera details; unticking Keep photo info drops all EXIF.
iPhones shoot in the wide-gamut Display P3 color space, and pd00 embeds each photo’s own ICC profile in the JPG, so colors don’t come out washed out. HDR photos are converted to standard dynamic range; the gain-map brightness boost isn’t carried over.
Skipping conversion: the Windows extension and “Most Compatible”
HEIC on Windows 11: the 99-cent extension
Install the free “HEIF Image Extensions” and the 99-cent “HEVC Video Extensions” from the Microsoft Store, and Windows 10 or 11 can display HEIC. That’s fine for viewing your own photos on your own PC, but everyone you send files to needs the same setup, and upload forms still refuse HEIC. Converting to JPG solves it once, for every recipient and app.
On the iPhone: switch to Most Compatible
If most of your photos end up on Windows, Android or the web, open Settings → Camera → Formats and choose Most Compatible. New photos are then shot as JPEG, at roughly twice the storage; existing ones stay HEIC. Alternatively, setting Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC to Automatic converts photos copied over a cable, though not files that reach you any other way.
Limits, and when this isn’t the right tool
- 500 files per batch, a technical cap that keeps the tab responsive; larger exports go through in rounds.
- Live Photos become stills. The .MOV part is skipped; pd00 doesn’t convert video.
- Browser support: recent Chrome, Edge and Firefox, or Safari 16.4 or later on Mac, iPhone and iPad.
Don’t bother converting if your photos stay on Apple devices. If you’ll edit them repeatedly, use HEIC to PNG so each save doesn’t add more compression; to put receipts or form pages in one file, use HEIC to PDF.
Your photos never leave your device
Photos are decoded by libheif compiled to WebAssembly (about 1.4 MB, downloaded once and then cached), converted and zipped inside your browser tab. Nothing is uploaded: the page’s Content-Security-Policy only allows connections to pd00.com and to Cloudflare’s cookieless visit counter (page views only, no photo data), the browser blocks everything else, and once the converter has loaded you can go offline and keep converting. Here’s how to check it in DevTools.