iPhones and iPads save photos as HEIC by default. The format keeps good quality at roughly half the size of a JPG, which saves space on the phone. The catch shows up when the photo leaves the Apple world: Windows apps, older editing software, web forms and many online stores either cannot open HEIC or refuse the upload. Converting to PNG gives you a file every program understands, without adding any compression of its own.
This converter runs entirely in your browser. Safari 17 and later can read HEIC directly. In Chrome, Edge and Firefox, which cannot display HEIC, the page uses a built-in decoder that runs on your device. Either way the photo is never uploaded.
Convert HEIC to PNG in four steps
- Copy the photos from your phone to your computer, or open this page on the phone itself. On a computer, drop the .heic files into the box above or click it to choose them.
- Keep PNG selected. Choose JPG instead if you want much smaller files for email or a website.
- Click Convert all. Each HEIC photo takes a few seconds to decode, so a batch of 50 can take a minute or two on an older laptop.
- Download single photos, or click Download all (ZIP) to get the whole set at once.
The converted PNG has the same width and height as the photo you see on the phone. The rotation from the camera is applied, so portrait shots come out upright.
Where HEIC files come from
Apple switched the iPhone camera to HEIC with iOS 11 in 2017, and every iPhone and iPad since saves photos that way unless you change the setting. Some Android phones can save HEIF too: Samsung Galaxy cameras, for example, have a high efficiency pictures option in the camera settings. You also get HEIC files when you export from Apple Photos without changing the format, when you download an iCloud photo library to a PC, or when a Mac shares a screenshot taken on an iPhone. The format is a container: it can hold one photo, several versions of a photo, a depth map or a short sequence. The converter takes the main image, which is the picture you see in the Photos app.
PNG or JPG for iPhone photos?
Both formats open everywhere. The right one depends on what you do next.
| You want to | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Edit, retouch or cut out the product later | PNG | Lossless, so each edit starts from clean pixels |
| Send by email or post online | JPG | Files are much smaller and load faster |
| Upload to a store as a product photo | JPG (or PNG if the store asks) | Stores compress uploads anyway; JPG keeps upload times short |
| Keep an archive copy outside Apple Photos | PNG or the original HEIC | PNG avoids another round of lossy compression |
| Print at a photo lab | JPG at quality 90 or higher | Labs accept it everywhere and the size stays manageable |
Expect large files. A 12 megapixel iPhone photo of about 2 MB as HEIC is often 15 to 25 MB as PNG, because PNG stores every pixel without lossy compression. If that is too big for your use, switch the format to JPG before you convert.
Things PNG cannot carry over
Being honest about the conversion helps you pick the right format:
- No transparency is added. A camera photo has no transparent areas, so the PNG has none either. If you need a cutout, remove the background in an editor after converting.
- HDR and wide color are flattened. Newer iPhones can record more brightness and color than a standard 8 bit PNG holds. The PNG shows the photo the way a normal screen displays it.
- Live Photo motion and bursts are dropped. You get the main still image only.
- Camera data is not copied. Date, camera model and GPS location from the HEIC do not travel into the PNG. That is useful for privacy, but keep the original if you need that information.
On the phone or on a computer?
Both work. On an iPhone, Safari reads HEIC natively, so converting on the phone is fast; the PNG files go to the Files app, where you can share them or save them to Photos. On a Windows PC or a Chromebook, copy the photos over first (by cable, iCloud for Windows or a shared drive), then convert in Chrome or Edge. For large batches a computer is more comfortable, because PNG files are big and phones can run short of memory and storage.
Stop the iPhone from saving HEIC
If you always need PNG or JPG, you can change the camera setting so new photos are saved as JPG:
- Open Settings and tap Camera.
- Tap Formats.
- Choose Most Compatible instead of High Efficiency.
New photos will then be JPG files, which take more space on the phone. Photos you already took stay HEIC. Sharing through AirDrop to a Mac keeps HEIC, while some apps convert automatically when you email or upload a photo, which is why the same picture sometimes arrives as JPG and sometimes as HEIC.
Using the PNG files in a store
Product photos shot on an iPhone are often good enough to sell with, once they are in the right format and size. After converting, these steps help:
- Crop to the shape your store uses with the image cropper, which has Shopify square and Etsy 4:3 presets.
- Fix sideways or tilted shots with the rotate image tool.
- Shrink files before upload with the image compressor, so pages load quickly.
Once the photos are on your store, keeping prices, titles and SEO fields tidy across many products is the next job. AM Jarvis's Bulk Edit Pro changes those fields across a whole catalog with a preview before anything is saved.
Note: Want smaller files instead? The HEIC to JPG converter uses the same decoder and saves compact JPGs with a quality slider.
Troubleshooting HEIC conversion
- "Could not decode this HEIC file": the file may be damaged in transfer, or it is a HEIF variant the decoder cannot read, such as some image sequences. Export the photo again from Apple Photos (File, Export, Export 1 Photo, Kind: JPEG or PNG) as a fallback.
- The photo comes out sideways: the camera rotation is normally applied. If an app already rotated the pixels and also kept an old rotation tag, the result can be turned. Fix it in seconds with the rotate tool.
- Conversion is slow: in Chrome, Edge and Firefox the decoder runs in JavaScript, which takes a few seconds per 12 megapixel photo. Safari on a Mac or iPhone decodes HEIC natively and is much faster.
- Files arrive as .HEIC from a Windows PC: upper-case extensions are fine; the converter detects HEIC from the file's content, not only its name.
Example: a batch of product shots
A small shop owner photographs 30 new items on an iPhone 15 and AirDrops them to a Mac, then copies them to a Windows laptop for listing. The laptop cannot preview them. Dropping all 30 into the converter with PNG selected produces 30 full resolution PNGs, about 4,032 by 3,024 pixels each, in one ZIP. The owner then crops each to a square with the image cropper and exports compact JPGs for the store. The PNG set stays on the laptop as the clean master copy for later edits, such as a seasonal banner.
Speed, limits and privacy
Decoding HEIC is heavy work, especially in browsers without native support, so the converter handles one photo at a time to keep your device responsive. Batches of up to 300 photos are accepted. Very large photos, such as 48 megapixel ProRAW exports saved as HEIC, may be slow or fail on phones with little free memory; a laptop handles them better. Your photos are processed in the browser tab and never sent anywhere.