The format iPhones and most recent Android phones save photos in. HEIC is a container — the High Efficiency Image File Format — holding one or more images compressed with HEVC, the same codec used for 4K video. It typically stores a photo in about half the space a JPEG of the same quality would take.

Why can’t Windows open my HEIC photos?

Because HEVC is patent-encumbered. Decoding it requires a licence, and Microsoft charges for the codec extension rather than absorbing that cost. It is not a missing feature or an Apple lock-in; it is a royalty. The same reason explains why Firefox cannot display HEIC at all and Chrome only sometimes can.

Will converting HEIC to JPG make the file smaller?

No — converting HEIC to JPG makes the file bigger, usually by a lot. YourDevice measured a 2.13 MB HEIC converting to a 3.41 MB JPEG at high quality. HEVC intra-frame compression beats JPEG by roughly two to one, so converting means giving that back. Convert for compatibility, never to save space.

Does converting to JPG lose quality?

Some, unavoidably: converting decodes one lossy format and re-encodes into another. YourDevice’s HEIC to JPG converter does that in your browser, at a quality setting you choose, and at high settings the loss is hard to see. What is more likely to matter is that JPEG is 8-bit — a HEIC holding 10-bit colour or an HDR gain map loses that range, which shows first in skies and bright highlights.

Is HEIC the same as HEIF?

HEIF is the container format; HEIC is HEIF with HEVC-compressed images inside, which is what Apple uses. You will also see .heif and .hif from other manufacturers. In practice the terms get used interchangeably and any tool that reads one reads the other.

Should I just turn HEIC off on my iPhone?

If you regularly send photos to Windows or Android users, yes — Settings, Camera, Formats, Most Compatible makes the phone shoot JPEG. You give up roughly half your storage efficiency and the 10-bit colour depth. If you mostly stay in the Apple ecosystem and convert occasionally, keeping HEIC is the better trade.

What is HEIC?

It is what your iPhone saves photos as, and it is genuinely better than JPEG — about half the size for the same picture, with room for things JPEG cannot hold at all. Most people meet it because something refuses to open it, and the reason for that has nothing to do with the format being new.

Why it won’t open: a royalty, not a feature

The images inside a HEIC are compressed with HEVC — the same codec as 4K video. HEVC is covered by patent pools, and decoding it commercially requires a licence. Microsoft passes that cost on: the codec is a paid extension rather than part of Windows. Mozilla declines to pay it, so Firefox cannot display HEIC at all.

That is the whole story. It is not Apple locking you in, and it is not a format too new for support — HEIC shipped in 2017. It is a bill nobody wants to pay on your behalf.

You can see it in the support numbers. Across 1.14 million real browser sessions measured early this year, HEVC decoding was available in roughly 85% overall — but that average hides the shape of it:

Browser	Can decode HEVC
Safari	~97%
Chrome	~81%
Edge	~56%
Firefox	essentially none

For comparison, H.264 — the codec behind ordinary MP4 video — sits at 99.94%. Edge at 56% is the number that surprises people: it is the same rendering engine as Chrome, on the same machines, and the difference is licensing.

Converting will make your file bigger

This is the thing converter sites do not put on the button. We measured it: a 2.13 MB HEIC became a 3.41 MB JPEG at high quality. Sixty percent larger, from the same photograph.

It is not a flaw in the conversion. HEVC intra-frame compression is roughly twice as efficient as JPEG, and that efficiency is exactly what you hand back when you convert. If you are converting to free up space, you are about to do the opposite. Convert for compatibility — because you need to send the photo to someone whose computer will not open it — and for nothing else.

What else is in there

HEIC is a container, not a single picture, and a photo from a modern phone usually holds several things at once:

The image, in tiles. A 12-megapixel iPhone photo is typically stored as an 8×6 grid of 512×512 tiles rather than one frame, so a viewer can decode part of it without decoding all of it.
10-bit colour. JPEG is 8 bits per channel — 256 levels. HEIC commonly carries 10, which is 1,024. That difference is invisible in most photos and very visible in a gradient like a sunset, where 8-bit banding shows as stripes.
An HDR gain map. A second, small image describing how much brighter each area should be on a display that can go brighter. On an HDR screen this is the difference between a window looking white and looking like daylight. JPEG has no way to carry it.
Depth and portrait data, alternative exposures, Live Photo frames, and the usual EXIF — camera, lens, timestamp and, if location was on, coordinates.

Converting to JPEG keeps the picture and drops most of the rest. That is usually fine and occasionally not — if you shoot HDR and care about highlight detail, a converted JPEG is visibly flatter, which is why the converter here offers formats that preserve the range as well as the ones that do not.

What to convert to

JPG — opens anywhere, on anything, forever. The right answer unless you have a specific reason otherwise.
PNG — lossless, and much larger again. Worth it only if the image will be edited and re-saved repeatedly.
AVIF — keeps the full brightness range and stays small, and browsers can display it. Poor support outside the browser.
DNG or EXR — for editing in Lightroom or a compositor. Note that a DNG made from a HEIC is not raw sensor data: the camera already demosaiced it, and nothing can put that back.

You should not have to upload a photo to change its format

Converting an image is arithmetic. It needs a decoder and an encoder, and both now run in a browser tab — a 12-megapixel HEIC decodes in under a second on an ordinary laptop. There is no technical reason for the file to leave your computer.

That matters more for photos than for most files, because of what the previous section listed: a holiday photo carries the coordinates of where you were standing. The converter here runs entirely in your browser and never uploads anything — and if you want the coordinates gone as well, that is a separate tool, deliberately, because plenty of people want the metadata kept.

Questions

What is a HEIC file?: The format iPhones and most recent Android phones save photos in. HEIC is a container — the High Efficiency Image File Format — holding one or more images compressed with HEVC, the same codec used for 4K video. It typically stores a photo in about half the space a JPEG of the same quality would take.
Why can’t Windows open my HEIC photos?: Because HEVC is patent-encumbered. Decoding it requires a licence, and Microsoft charges for the codec extension rather than absorbing that cost. It is not a missing feature or an Apple lock-in; it is a royalty. The same reason explains why Firefox cannot display HEIC at all and Chrome only sometimes can.
Will converting HEIC to JPG make the file smaller?: No — converting HEIC to JPG makes the file bigger, usually by a lot. YourDevice measured a 2.13 MB HEIC converting to a 3.41 MB JPEG at high quality. HEVC intra-frame compression beats JPEG by roughly two to one, so converting means giving that back. Convert for compatibility, never to save space.
Does converting to JPG lose quality?: Some, unavoidably: converting decodes one lossy format and re-encodes into another. YourDevice’s HEIC to JPG converter does that in your browser, at a quality setting you choose, and at high settings the loss is hard to see. What is more likely to matter is that JPEG is 8-bit — a HEIC holding 10-bit colour or an HDR gain map loses that range, which shows first in skies and bright highlights.
Is HEIC the same as HEIF?: HEIF is the container format; HEIC is HEIF with HEVC-compressed images inside, which is what Apple uses. You will also see .heif and .hif from other manufacturers. In practice the terms get used interchangeably and any tool that reads one reads the other.
Should I just turn HEIC off on my iPhone?: If you regularly send photos to Windows or Android users, yes — Settings, Camera, Formats, Most Compatible makes the phone shoot JPEG. You give up roughly half your storage efficiency and the 10-bit colour depth. If you mostly stay in the Apple ecosystem and convert occasionally, keeping HEIC is the better trade.

Size and timing figures are our own, measured on real phone HEICs in August 2026. Browser support figures are from a public dataset of 1.14 million sessions and 363 million codec tests, January–March 2026.