What Is a HEIC File, and How Do You Open iPhone Photos Everywhere?
If your iPhone photos arrive as .HEIC and won't open on a Windows PC, an Android phone or an upload form, here is what the format is, why Apple uses it, and the simplest ways to view or convert it.
What a HEIC file actually is
HEIC is the file name Apple uses for HEIF, a modern image container, with the picture inside compressed using HEVC (also called H.265). Apple made it the iPhone's default photo format in 2017 with iOS 11. Its main advantage is size: it stores a photo in roughly half the space of a JPEG at a similar quality, which is why your phone's storage lasts longer.
A HEIC file can also hold more than a plain photo -- a depth map for portrait shots, the extra frames of a Live Photo, or several images in one file. That flexibility is useful on the phone but is part of why other devices struggle with it.
Why it won't open everywhere
HEIC is efficient but not as widely supported as JPEG, which almost everything has understood for decades. Older versions of Windows and Android, many website upload forms, and some older photo apps simply don't read .heic files.
On Windows 10 and 11 you can add support by installing Microsoft's free HEIF Image Extensions from the Microsoft Store, after which Photos will open HEIC files. But an upload form that only accepts JPG or PNG will still reject a .heic file no matter what your own PC can open -- which is when you need to convert.
Switch it off on the iPhone, or convert on transfer
If you would rather your iPhone take JPEGs from now on, open Settings, tap Camera, then Formats, and choose Most Compatible (the High Efficiency option is the one that saves HEIC). New photos will be JPEG; photos you already took stay HEIC.
Apple can also convert automatically when you move photos off the phone: under Settings > Photos, the Transfer to Mac or PC setting offers Automatic, which hands over JPEGs to a Windows PC instead of HEIC. These are Apple's own settings and may move slightly between iOS versions.
Converting the HEIC photos you already have
For photos already saved as HEIC, our HEIC to JPG converter turns them into ordinary JPGs in the browser, up to 20 at a time and up to 65 megapixels each. From our own tests in October 2026, running the same code the tool uses: the converted JPG keeps the date the photo was taken and the camera make and model, and drops GPS location and other hidden data; a photo stored sideways is turned the right way up; and for a HEIC that holds several images, the tool uses the main (primary) image Apple marked, not whichever frame happens to be first.
If you need those photos as a single document afterwards -- for a form or an application -- convert them to JPG and then use our JPG to PDF converter.
Will the JPG be bigger than the HEIC?
Usually, yes. Because HEVC compression is newer and more efficient than JPEG, the same picture saved as JPEG takes more space -- in our October 2026 tests the JPG came out larger than the HEIC every time. That is normal and the picture quality is kept; it simply reflects the older format. If file size matters for an upload, resize the photo before converting, and see our guide on turning photos into one PDF for how to keep a photo PDF small.