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Convert HEIC to JPG on Mac

macOS has supported HEIC natively since High Sierra in 2017, which means Preview, Photos, Quick Look, and most native Mac applications can open HEIC files immediately with no codec install required. The friction point on Mac is not opening HEIC but exporting it cleanly to JPEG with precise quality control, because Preview's built-in export uses a fixed internal quality setting that Apple has never publicly documented and that you cannot adjust through the dialog. FixTools gives Mac users a browser-based alternative that exposes the full JPEG quality range from sixty to one hundred percent, supports proper batch processing with parallel multi-core execution, and produces a ZIP archive that preserves filenames for clean re-import, all of which matter when you are delivering JPGs to clients, print labs, or stock platforms that have specific file size and quality requirements that Preview simply cannot target.

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Cost: Free forever
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Processing: In your browser
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Quality slider Preview does not provide

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Batch convert and download as ZIP

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Works in Safari and Chrome on macOS

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HEIC to JPG Converter

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macOS Native HEIC Support vs. Browser-Based Conversion: When to Use Each

macOS has supported HEIC natively since High Sierra, version 10.13, which shipped in 2017 alongside the corresponding iOS 11 release that introduced HEIC on iPhones in the first place. Preview, Photos, Quick Look, the File Provider extension that drives Finder previews, and most native macOS applications can open and display HEIC files without any codec purchase or system setting change, because Apple writes the underlying ImageIO framework and the HEVC silicon decoder firmware as part of the operating system itself. Preview can export HEIC to JPEG through File, Export, selecting JPEG as the format, but the export dialog deliberately does not expose a numeric quality slider, and the internal quality setting Apple uses for that export has never been publicly documented. Practical testing across multiple macOS versions consistently shows Preview encodes JPEG at approximately quality 85 to 87, which is fine for casual sharing but limiting for professional delivery where exact quality targets matter.

macOS Automator provides a Change Type of Images Quick Action that appears in Finder's right-click contextual menu under Quick Actions, and that action is currently the fastest built-in Mac batch conversion path that does not require opening any application. Select one or many HEIC files in Finder, right-click, choose Quick Actions, then Convert Image, set JPEG as the target format, and pick a quality preset from Low, Medium, High, or Actual Size. The Actual Size option applies a high-quality JPEG encode, though again the exact numeric quality percentage is undocumented and varies somewhat between macOS releases. This Finder Quick Action workflow suits Mac users who are comfortable with the macOS automation tooling and do not need to specify their output quality in numeric terms for downstream delivery requirements.

FixTools on Mac is the right tool when you need to specify exact JPEG quality, for example quality 80 for web delivery, quality 88 for general client handoff, or quality 92 to 95 for print-grade work, none of which Preview or the Finder Quick Action can target with precision. The browser-based converter is also useful when you need a clean ZIP download of a converted batch without intermediate files cluttering your Downloads folder, when you are working on a managed Mac in a corporate or educational environment where Automator has been disabled by Mobile Device Management policy, and when you want to convert HEIC files that live outside the Photos library, such as files received by email, AirDropped from an iPhone user, or pulled in from a USB drive. Safari on macOS additionally has full native HEIC support, which means FixTools in Safari leverages the macOS hardware HEVC decoder for noticeably faster batch performance than the same tool produces in Chrome.

A practical workflow recommendation for Mac users who regularly convert HEIC for delivery is to pair FixTools with the Mac Photos app rather than treating them as alternatives. Use Photos as the primary library and album manager, drag photos directly from the Photos timeline into a FixTools Safari tab when you need controlled JPEG export, and let Photos continue to handle the HEIC originals in their native format for archival storage. This pairing gives you the storage efficiency of HEIC on the Mac side for long-term keep, with the precise JPEG output of FixTools at the moment you need to hand files off to a non-Apple recipient or a quality-sensitive destination. The combined workflow is faster than wrestling with Preview export dialogs and more flexible than committing the whole library to one format or the other.

macOS Quick Actions and Automator (Apple Support)Preview user guide: export images (Apple Support)

How to use this tool

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Upload HEIC files from your Mac in Safari or Chrome. Set your preferred JPEG quality (try 85% for web, 92% for print). Download individually or as a ZIP for delivery.

How It Works

Step-by-step guide to convert heic to jpg on mac:

1
Open FixTools in Safari or Chrome on Mac
Navigate to fixtools.io in either Safari or Chrome on your Mac and open the HEIC to JPG Converter page. Safari is the preferred browser on Mac for HEIC conversion because it has direct access to the macOS hardware HEVC decoder via the underlying ImageIO framework, which makes decoding significantly faster than the WebAssembly software fallback that Chrome and Firefox rely on. For batch jobs of more than a handful of files, Safari can be two to three times faster on the same Mac.
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Upload your HEIC files
Drag HEIC files directly from Finder onto the FixTools upload area in the browser, or click the Upload control and pick files through the standard macOS file picker. Drag from the Photos app sidebar also works on Mac, which lets you skip the export-to-Finder intermediate step. Folder drops are accepted in Safari and Chrome, so dropping an entire HEIC-containing folder queues every file inside in one operation.
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Adjust quality if needed
Use the quality slider in the converter interface to set your target JPEG quality factor between sixty and one hundred percent. The default sits at 85 which suits most casual and screen-display uses, with output that is visually indistinguishable from the HEIC original on any normal screen. Increase to 90 to 92 for print delivery or design layout work, and drop to 78 to 82 for compact email attachments.
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Convert and download
Click the Convert button to start processing. Each HEIC decodes through Safari's hardware path or Chrome's WebAssembly decoder, then re-encodes as a baseline JPEG at your chosen quality. Download individual JPGs through the per-file arrow buttons or grab the entire batch as a ZIP archive through the Download All as ZIP control. The ZIP preserves every original HEIC base filename with the extension swapped to .jpg, keeping albums in chronological order on re-import.

Real-world examples

Common situations where this approach makes a real difference:

Web designer preparing assets

A freelance web designer on a MacBook Pro receives twenty client product photos as HEIC files exported from the client's iPhone 14, intended for a redesigned homepage hero carousel. Preview opens them fine on her Mac but the production constraint is an internal performance budget that requires every hero image to stay below five hundred kilobytes for fast initial page load on mobile networks. Using FixTools in Safari at quality 78, she converts all twenty HEIC files averaging 4.2 MB each into JPGs averaging 420 KB each, hitting the file size target while keeping acceptable visual sharpness at the carousel display sizes between 1200 and 1600 pixels wide.

Print production workflow

A graphic designer prepares a self-published photo book layout in Adobe InDesign 2024 on an Apple Silicon Mac, working from thirty-five iPhone 15 Pro HEIC source photos shot during a recent overseas trip. InDesign on Mac opens HEIC natively but the contracted print lab in the project brief explicitly requires JPEG files at a minimum quality target equivalent to 90 percent for optimal half-tone reproduction. Using FixTools at quality 92 the designer batch converts all thirty-five HEIC files at an average source size of 3.8 MB into JPGs averaging 7.2 MB each, places them in InDesign as the book's hero spreads, and the print lab accepts the resulting export PDF without any quality rejection notice.

Managed Mac with Automator disabled

A corporate communications manager working on a company-issued MacBook Pro running fleet-managed macOS Sonoma finds that the Quick Actions menu has been locked down by Mobile Device Management policy, so the usual right-click Convert Image option in Finder is unavailable and she cannot enable it without an IT helpdesk ticket. She needs to convert twenty-five HEIC event photos to JPG within the next hour for inclusion in a press release going out at end of day. FixTools running in the IT-sanctioned Chrome installation converts all twenty-five files in a single batch upload at quality 88, produces a clean ZIP archive, and delivers the JPGs in under three minutes with no IT involvement.

Cross-platform team photo sharing

A project manager on macOS Ventura coordinates a hybrid product launch team where roughly half the colleagues use Windows laptops without HEVC codec extensions and the rest use Macs. She collects photos from three iPhone-using team members covering an offsite event the week before, knowing that her Windows colleagues will report the same broken-file experience that has happened on every previous cross-platform photo share she has run. Rather than waiting for inevitable complaints, she preemptively batch converts all submitted HEIC files to JPG using FixTools at quality 86, uploads the resulting JPGs to the shared Dropbox folder, and notifies the team that everything is ready, sidestepping the support cycle entirely.

Pro tips

Get better results with these expert suggestions:

Safari on Mac is faster than Chrome for HEIC conversion

Safari on macOS routes HEIC decoding through the operating system's ImageIO framework, which on Apple Silicon Macs and Intel Macs with the T2 security chip dispatches the actual HEVC work to a dedicated silicon decoder rather than running it on the general-purpose CPU. Chrome and Firefox on the same Mac use a WebAssembly software decoder running on the CPU because they do not have an integration path into ImageIO. For large batches on a Mac, Safari with FixTools commonly runs two to three times faster than Chrome with FixTools, so use Safari for heavy session work.

Drag from Photos app directly to FixTools upload area

On Mac you can drag photos directly out of the Photos app and onto the FixTools upload area in a Safari or Chrome tab without any intermediate export step. Select one or many photos in the Photos library or any album view, then drag the selection across to the browser tab and release. The browser receives the photos as HEIC files just as if they had been exported to Finder first. This trick saves a discrete export step from the workflow and avoids cluttering your Downloads or Desktop folder with intermediate copies.

Use Automator for recurring large batches

If you regularly convert very large batches of HEIC files, hundreds at a time on a recurring weekly or monthly schedule, set up a Finder Quick Action using Automator with the Change Type of Images action. The Automator route runs entirely through native macOS APIs and is faster on very large batches because it sidesteps the browser sandbox overhead entirely. FixTools remains the better choice for one-off conversions, batches where you need a specific numeric quality target, or any situation where Automator has been disabled by Mobile Device Management policy on a managed Mac.

Check color profile output for P3 to sRGB mapping

iPhone HEIC files captured on any model from iPhone 7 onward are encoded in the Display P3 color space, which contains a wider gamut of saturated reds and greens than the older sRGB standard. macOS Preview's JPEG export preserves the Display P3 profile in the output file. FixTools maps the gamut down to sRGB by default, which is the correct choice for web delivery since most browsers and platforms assume sRGB, but it may look slightly less vivid than a Preview-exported JPEG when viewed on a P3-capable display. For print use, confirm the color profile requirement with your print lab before committing.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Yes, macOS Preview has supported HEIC natively since macOS High Sierra, version 10.13, released in September 2017 alongside the corresponding iOS 11 release that introduced HEIC on iPhones. Any HEIC file double-clicked in Finder opens directly in Preview by default, and Preview can display HEIC at full resolution, rotate, crop, and annotate just as it does any other image format. Preview can also export HEIC to JPEG via File, Export, selecting JPEG from the format dropdown. The catch is that the export quality is fixed internally at a value Apple has never publicly documented, somewhere around 85 to 87 percent based on third-party testing, and that quality value is not adjustable through any visible control in the Preview export dialog.

Open the HEIC file in Preview by double-clicking it in Finder or by dragging it onto the Preview icon in the Dock. Choose File, Export from the menu bar, select JPEG from the Format dropdown in the resulting dialog, choose a destination folder, and click Save. For batch conversion using Preview, open multiple HEIC files at once through File, Open with multi-select enabled, then select all the thumbnails in Preview's sidebar using Cmd-A, then choose File, Export Selected Images, pick a destination folder and JPEG as the format, and Preview writes a separate JPEG file for each selected HEIC. The output quality is the same fixed internal setting that single-file export uses.

Preview exports JPEG at a fixed internal quality factor that practical testing places at roughly 85 to 87 percent depending on the macOS version, and that quality is not adjustable through the dialog. FixTools allows you to choose any JPEG quality from 60 to 100 percent through a visible slider. For most casual photographs where Preview's default sits in an acceptable range, the difference is negligible and either tool produces fine output. Where FixTools provides clear additional value is when you need 90 percent or higher quality for print delivery where the print lab specifies a quality target, or 75 to 80 percent for maximum compression on web-bound files where you are trying to hit a specific page weight budget.

For Mac users comfortable with basic macOS workflows, the Finder Quick Action is typically fastest for ad-hoc batches: select the HEIC files in Finder, right-click, choose Quick Actions, then Convert Image, and pick JPEG with an Actual Size quality preset. For users who need numeric quality control or a clean ZIP archive download for delivering to clients, FixTools running in Safari on Mac is the next best option because it leverages the macOS hardware HEVC decoder for near-native conversion speed. Automator with a custom workflow file is the most powerful option for recurring large batches that exceed a few hundred files at a time, but it requires initial setup time that ad-hoc batches do not justify.

Yes, the Photos app on Mac includes a robust HEIC to JPEG export path that is often the best built-in choice when the source photos already live inside the Photos library. Select the photos you want to export from any album or timeline view, choose File, Export, Export Photos from the menu bar, set the Photo Kind dropdown to JPEG, pick a JPEG Quality preset from Low, Medium, High, or Maximum, optionally choose whether to include location metadata and IPTC keywords, and click the Export button to write out the JPGs to your chosen destination. This is the cleanest path when working with a curated album because it preserves the album order in the exported filenames.

FixTools is the right choice on Mac when you need a specific numeric JPEG quality setting that Preview cannot expose, when you want batch conversion that produces a single ZIP archive for clean client delivery without intermediate files cluttering your Downloads folder, when you are working on a managed Mac in a corporate or educational environment where Automator and Quick Actions have been disabled by Mobile Device Management policy, or when you are handling HEIC files that live outside the Photos library such as email attachments, AirDropped files from an iPhone user, or files pulled from an external USB drive or shared network volume. For everything else, the built-in macOS tools are usually fine.

Yes, macOS includes a command-line tool called sips, short for Scriptable Image Processing System, that can convert image formats from a Terminal prompt. The basic invocation looks like sips -s format jpeg --out /path/to/output/folder /path/to/input/*.heic, which converts every HEIC file in the input folder to JPEG and writes the results into the specified output folder. For a repeatable workflow, save the command in a shell script and bind it to a keyboard shortcut through Automator or a tool like Raycast. This scripted approach is faster than any GUI method for very large library migrations running into thousands of files, and it requires no additional software installation beyond what already ships with macOS.

Yes, FixTools preserves the complete EXIF metadata block from the source HEIC and writes it into the output JPG using the standard EXIF 2.3 encoding that every JPEG-aware application understands, including Photos, Lightroom, Capture One, and any cataloging tool you might use downstream. That means GPS coordinates from the original capture location, the timestamp, the iPhone model and software version, the focal length, aperture, shutter speed, ISO value, white balance state, and orientation information all carry across to the converted JPG intact. This matters particularly on Mac because photo library managers like Apple Photos and Adobe Lightroom rely heavily on EXIF timestamps to sort imports into the correct chronological order, and broken metadata can scramble years of carefully organized library structure.

FixTools depends on a modern browser that supports the HTML5 Canvas API and WebAssembly, both of which have been standard in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox for many years. It works fine on older Macs running macOS Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, and Ventura provided you have a reasonably current browser version installed. On older Intel Macs without the T2 security chip, the hardware HEVC decoder is not available, so even Safari will fall back to software decoding, which makes conversion noticeably slower than on Apple Silicon Macs but does not block the workflow. For very old Macs running macOS Mojave or earlier, browser updates may have stopped, in which case FixTools may still load but performance will be limited by an outdated JavaScript engine.

Yes, after the first successful page load. The converter ships as a static page bundled with its JavaScript and WebAssembly decoder, all of which Safari and Chrome cache aggressively under standard HTTP cache headers when you first load the page over a network connection. Once that initial cache is populated, you can disconnect from Wi-Fi, switch to airplane mode, or move to a location with no cellular service or building network, and FixTools will continue to convert HEIC to JPG using the cached assets entirely on the local Mac. This matters in practice for travel scenarios, off-grid work, environments with regulatory restrictions on outbound traffic, and any other context where guaranteed local processing without network dependence is required during the conversion itself.