You email a photo from your iPhone and the recipient cannot open it. An upload form rejects the file. Windows shows a blank icon where the picture should be. Upload your .heic files above and get ordinary JPGs that work everywhere.
Below: what HEIC actually is and why Apple uses it, how to stop your phone producing them in the first place, and the one thing to check before you share the converted files.
HEIC is Apple's name for images stored in the HEIF container, using HEVC compression. Every iPhone since iOS 11 in 2017 has defaulted to it, which is why an entire photo library can be in a format half the internet cannot read.
The reason is genuinely good: HEIC files are roughly half the size of an equivalent JPEG at the same visual quality. On a phone holding fifteen thousand photos, that is a great deal of storage saved. It also supports features JPEG cannot — 16-bit colour depth rather than 8, transparency, image sequences for Live Photos, and non-destructive edits stored alongside the original.
The problem is not the format. It is that HEVC carries patent licensing requirements, which slowed adoption everywhere outside Apple's ecosystem. Windows needs an extension to display HEIC. Many websites reject the upload. Older software has never heard of it. So a file that is technically better is practically unusable in a lot of places.
If you keep hitting this, change the setting once and the problem goes away for future photos.
Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible. Your phone then captures JPEG instead of HEIC. Photos take roughly twice the storage, and everything you take from that point opens anywhere without conversion.
There is a second setting worth knowing about: Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC → Automatic. With this on, your phone converts HEIC to JPEG when transferring by cable. Set to Keep Originals and it copies the HEIC files untouched — which is often how people end up with a folder of files their computer will not open.
Neither setting changes photos you have already taken. Those still need converting.
Two things worth knowing before you convert a whole library.
File size roughly doubles. JPEG is less efficient, so the same picture at the same visual quality takes about twice the space. Converting two thousand photos meaningfully increases what you are storing. If size matters afterwards, compress or resize the results.
Live Photos become still images. A Live Photo is a still plus a short video clip stored together. JPEG holds one frame and nothing else, so the motion and sound are dropped — you get the key frame as an ordinary photograph. Nothing is corrupted, but the movement is gone.
Both are one-directional. Converting back to HEIC afterwards does not restore the smaller file size advantage or the motion. Keep your originals on the phone or in your photo library, and treat the JPGs as copies for sharing.
Camera photos carry EXIF metadata alongside the picture: device make and model, the exact date and time, camera settings, and often GPS coordinates recording precisely where the photo was taken.
For a holiday snapshot that is harmless and occasionally useful. For a photo taken at your home, a workplace, a child's school, or anywhere you would rather not publish the location of, it is a real disclosure that travels invisibly with the file.
Most large social platforms strip it on upload. Plenty of forums, messaging apps, marketplaces and websites do not. If you are selling something online and photographing it at home, this is worth two seconds of attention.
To check a converted file on Windows: right-click, Properties, then Details. On a Mac: open in Preview and use Tools → Show Inspector. Conversion tools often strip metadata as a side effect, but verify rather than assume when it matters.
Compress Image and Resize Image bring the converted files back down in size, JPG to PDF bundles photos into one document, and Image to PPTX places one on a slide. Browse all image tools.