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Convert iPhone Photos to JPG

Every modern iPhone, from the iPhone 7 onward and across every generation that has shipped since iOS 11, saves new camera photos in HEIC format by default in order to roughly halve the storage they consume on the device. The compromise is that HEIC photos are not directly compatible with many Windows programs, with the stock Gallery apps on most Android devices, with countless web upload forms, or with traditional photo printing services that have not updated their intake pipelines for the modern Apple format. FixTools converts your iPhone HEIC photos to standard JPG format so they can travel anywhere a JPEG can travel, which is essentially everywhere. The whole flow runs in your browser, requires no App Store download, asks for no Apple ID or login, and works equally well started directly on the iPhone itself as it does on a desktop after the photos have been transferred off.

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Make iPhone photos universally compatible

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Works directly from iPhone browser

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HEIC to JPG Converter

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iPhone Camera Settings: "Most Compatible" vs "High Efficiency"

The iPhone camera format is governed by a single toggle hidden inside Settings, Camera, Formats. The High Efficiency option saves new photos as HEIC and new videos as HEVC, using roughly half the storage of the alternative across the entire camera roll. The Most Compatible option reverts to saving photos as JPEG and videos as H.264, which any device on earth can play but which roughly doubles the disk footprint per capture. Apple introduced this toggle in iOS 11 alongside the HEIC format change as a concession to users who valued universal compatibility over storage savings. Crucially, switching the setting only affects new captures from the moment of the change forward, so every existing HEIC already sitting in your library remains as HEIC and still needs conversion any time you want to share it outside the Apple ecosystem, no matter how the camera is configured today.

A separate but tightly related setting lives in Settings, Photos, Transfer to Mac or PC, and it controls what format iOS chooses when you plug the iPhone into a computer via USB cable. Set to Automatic, iOS inspects the connected host computer and converts HEIC to JPEG on the fly when transferring to a Windows machine, while sending the native HEIC unchanged to a Mac. Set to Keep Originals, iOS always sends the unmodified HEIC regardless of what is on the other end of the cable. Most Windows users benefit from leaving this on Automatic so that USB-imported photos arrive as opens-everywhere JPGs, while Mac and creative-professional users may prefer Keep Originals to retain the high-efficiency compression for archival and editing purposes.

A third independent set of behaviors applies to sharing via AirDrop, iMessage, Mail, and third-party share sheet integrations. When you share from the Photos app directly to a non-Apple device through these channels, iOS 13 and later versions can automatically convert HEIC to JPEG for compatibility, deciding on the fly based on what the receiving end is capable of. The conversion is transparent and you never see a setting for it. However, when sharing the same files via the Files app, the iCloud Drive folder, or third-party cloud storage apps like Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive, the original HEIC is typically sent untouched. For guaranteed compatibility when emailing or messaging photos to Windows and Android contacts, the safest path is always to convert to JPG first using FixTools, which removes any dependency on iOS guessing correctly about the recipient capabilities.

A fourth wrinkle applies specifically to iCloud Photos sync. When iCloud Photos is enabled and Optimize iPhone Storage is on, the device holds compressed thumbnails locally and fetches the full-resolution HEIC from iCloud on demand. This usually works invisibly, but it means that converting a photo through FixTools may briefly trigger a download from iCloud while the file is loaded into the browser. On a fast Wi-Fi connection this is unnoticeable; on cellular data with a tight monthly cap it can use a surprising amount of bandwidth for a batch of high-resolution captures. To avoid that, either run conversions on Wi-Fi or temporarily switch to Download and Keep Originals before doing a large batch run.

Apple support: change iPhone camera format iOS 11 HEIF/HEVC adoption (Apple Developer)HEIF overview (Wikipedia)

How to use this tool

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Upload HEIC photos from your iPhone's Files or Photos app and convert to JPG. Save the converted JPGs back to your camera roll.

How It Works

Step-by-step guide to convert iphone photos to jpg:

1
Open FixTools in Safari on iPhone
Open Safari on your iPhone and navigate to fixtools.io, then tap through to the HEIC to JPG Converter. Safari is the preferred browser for this workflow because it has the most direct access to the iOS Photos library through the system file picker and uses the on-device hardware HEVC decoder for the fastest possible conversion. The page is mobile-optimized with large tap targets sized for thumb interaction and an upload control positioned in easy reach.
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Upload your iPhone photo
Tap the Upload button to bring up the iOS share sheet, then choose Photo Library and pick one or several photos from your Camera Roll, an album, or a recent share. iOS will request permission to access your photos the first time, which you can grant in Settings, Safari, Photos, Selected Photos for a least-privilege approach. Selected photos are loaded straight into the browser memory of the Safari tab without ever touching a server.
3
Convert to JPG
The conversion runs immediately once the photo finishes loading into the browser. On a recent iPhone the hardware HEVC decoder finishes a typical capture in well under a second, and a JPG preview appears in the result panel with the projected output file size shown beside it. If you want a different quality target, slide the quality control before downloading and the projection updates live so you can see exactly how the file size shifts.
4
Save to your iPhone
Tap the Download button to retrieve the JPG. In Safari on iOS the file lands in your Downloads folder inside the Files app by default, from where you can long-press and choose Save to Photos to push it into the Camera Roll alongside the HEIC original. Alternatively, in the result preview itself, press and hold the converted image thumbnail and choose Save to Photos directly from the iOS context menu without going through the Files app at all.

Real-world examples

Common situations where this approach makes a real difference:

Sending iPhone photos to an Android family member

A parent with an iPhone 13 regularly shares family photos and weekend snapshots with a sibling who carries a Samsung Galaxy S22. The sibling's Gallery app shows broken-image icons for every HEIC and the photos arrive blank when forwarded through WhatsApp despite the message itself going through fine. The parent adopts a new routine of running each batch through FixTools in Safari on the iPhone before sending, and from the first converted batch onward the sibling receives clean, viewable JPG photos that open in any Android app, including the Gallery, Google Photos, and WhatsApp preview.

Submitting iPhone photos to a photo competition

A keen amateur photographer enters an online landscape competition whose entry rules require JPEG submissions of no more than 5 MB each. Their strongest shot from a recent hike, taken on an iPhone 13 Pro, was saved as HEIC at 4.2 MB and would balloon past the limit if naively converted at quality 100. They open FixTools in Safari directly on the iPhone, upload the HEIC, slide the quality to 88 to produce a 4.8 MB JPG that retains visible detail in the shadow regions, and submit the converted file through the competition portal from the same browser, all in under a minute without ever touching a computer.

Converting photos for a Google Forms submission

A university student is asked to submit photographic coursework evidence through a Google Form that accepts only JPEG uploads up to 10 MB per file. Photos taken on the iPhone appear in the form upload picker as HEIC files when accessed through certain mobile browsers, and the form returns an unsupported file type error. The student opens FixTools in Chrome on the iPhone, converts three coursework HEIC photos to JPG at quality 90 in a single batch, downloads them to the Files app, and attaches each converted JPG to the form one at a time. The submission goes through cleanly with no instructor intervention.

Real estate agent sharing property photos from iPhone

A real estate agent photographs the interior of a new listing on an iPhone 15 between meetings and needs to share the twelve best shots with a Windows-based listing coordinator who writes the property descriptions and uploads to the MLS feed. The first round of photos arrives as HEIC on the coordinator's PC and cannot be opened at all in Windows Photos. The agent runs the next batch through FixTools right on the iPhone before sending, converts twelve property photos at quality 90 to preserve detail in the trickier mixed-lighting interior shots, and emails the converted JPGs in a single message that the coordinator can immediately open and process.

Pro tips

Get better results with these expert suggestions:

Switch to Most Compatible only for specific shoots

Rather than flipping your iPhone permanently into JPEG capture mode and losing the storage benefits of HEIC for everyday photos, leave the camera on High Efficiency as the default and only switch to Most Compatible before specific events where you know in advance you will need to share photos directly with Windows or Android users right off the device. A conference, a family gathering with mixed phone brands, a quick product shoot for a Windows-only client. Switch back to High Efficiency afterward and your camera roll goes back to half-size captures.

Use iCloud.com to download HEIC as JPEG automatically

When you sign in to icloud.com from a web browser running on Windows, Android, ChromeOS, or Linux, the iCloud Photos web interface detects the non-Apple browser and automatically converts every downloaded HEIC into a JPEG on the server before sending. Navigate to icloud.com slash photos, select the photos you want with shift-click for ranges or command-click for individual additions, hit Download, and the resulting ZIP contains universally-compatible JPGs. This sidesteps the conversion question entirely for moderate batch sizes up to a few hundred photos at a time.

AirDrop to Mac keeps HEIC; email to Windows converts automatically

iOS applies different conversion logic to different share channels in ways that often surprise users. AirDrop to another Apple device always preserves the native HEIC because both endpoints can read it efficiently. When you use the iOS Mail app to attach a photo to a message and the recipient address ends in a non-Apple domain, iOS sometimes auto-converts to JPEG, but the behavior is not guaranteed across iOS versions and depends on heuristics about the recipient device. For absolute certainty that a Windows or Android contact will be able to open the attachment, convert the photo to JPG in FixTools first and attach that file instead of the original HEIC.

Check Live Photo components separately

An iPhone Live Photo is actually two files stored as a pair in the Photos library: a HEIC still image that captures the keyframe and a short MOV video clip of about 1.5 seconds covering the moments before and after the shutter press. FixTools converts the HEIC still component into a standard JPG, which is what almost every cross-platform sharing scenario actually needs. The MOV motion component is a separate file that is not affected by HEIC conversion. If you specifically want to share the motion effect to a non-Apple recipient, use the iPhone Photos app share sheet to export the Live Photo as an animated GIF or short MP4 video before converting the still separately.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Apple switched the default capture format for iPhones to HEIC in iOS 11, which shipped publicly in September 2017, as part of a broader move to modern compression formats across the operating system. The motivation was storage efficiency at enormous scale: HEIC photos are roughly half the size of equivalent-quality JPEGs because HEVC compression is significantly more sophisticated than the thirty-year-old DCT algorithm JPEG relies on. A typical iPhone 15 Pro photo lands at 3 to 5 MB in HEIC versus 6 to 10 MB if saved as a JPEG of comparable visual quality. Multiplied across hundreds of millions of iPhones and the iCloud Photos backups that pair with them, the difference adds up to colossal storage and bandwidth savings for both users and Apple. The unavoidable trade is reduced compatibility outside the Apple ecosystem.

Open the iOS Settings app, scroll down to Camera, tap Formats, and select Most Compatible. From that moment forward, every new photo your iPhone captures will be saved as JPEG and every video as H.264, regardless of the storage cost. The change applies only to new captures, so existing HEIC photos already sitting in your library remain in HEIC format and still need conversion through FixTools or another tool when you want to share them outside the Apple ecosystem. Bear in mind that the Most Compatible setting roughly doubles the storage each new photo consumes, so a 128 GB iPhone will fill up significantly faster, and iCloud Photos backups will use proportionally more cloud quota.

Yes, and no app installation is required. Open Safari on your iPhone, navigate to fixtools.io, tap through to the HEIC to JPG Converter, and tap the Upload control. iOS brings up its standard photo picker through which you select one or several photos from your Photos library. The conversion runs on the iPhone hardware HEVC decoder, which is fast enough that even a high-resolution iPhone 15 Pro capture finishes in well under a second. Once converted, tap Download to save to the Files app, then optionally Save to Photos to push the JPG back into the Camera Roll alongside the HEIC original. The full round trip per photo takes well under thirty seconds on any recent iPhone.

AirDrop to another Apple device, meaning another iPhone, iPad, or Mac, always sends the native HEIC because both endpoints have full HEVC decoder support and shipping the smaller file is faster across the wireless link. AirDrop to a non-Apple device is not even possible because AirDrop is an Apple-only protocol that relies on Bluetooth discovery and peer-to-peer Wi-Fi handshakes the rest of the industry has not adopted. For USB transfers to Windows PCs, the relevant setting lives in Settings, Photos, Transfer to Mac or PC. Setting that to Automatic asks iOS to detect Windows recipients and convert to JPEG during the transfer. Setting it to Keep Originals always sends the unmodified HEIC regardless of destination.

No, FixTools is careful to preserve the entire EXIF metadata block from the HEIC source and rewrite it into the JPG output. That means the GPS coordinates of where the photo was captured, the precise timestamp down to the second, the iPhone model and software version, the lens focal length used, the aperture, shutter speed, ISO setting, white balance state, and orientation flags all transfer to the converted file using the standard EXIF 2.3 encoding that every JPEG-aware piece of software understands. Several social platforms strip EXIF on upload for user privacy, which is a server-side behavior outside the converter's control, but the converted JPG file itself retains the full metadata block when downloaded directly.

iPhone screenshots are actually saved as PNG, not HEIC, regardless of the camera format setting. You can verify this by checking the file extension of any screenshot in the Photos app: it will be .png. Only photos taken with the iPhone camera default to HEIC; the screenshot capture pipeline uses PNG because lossless compression is the right call for crisp UI elements and text rendering that JPEG would soften. To convert iPhone screenshots from PNG to JPG, use the Image Format Converter on FixTools instead of the HEIC tool. PNG to JPG is a separate, simpler conversion that does not involve any HEVC decoding work.

There is no hard-coded ceiling in FixTools because batch size limits are determined by device memory rather than an artificial server-side cap. An iPhone 14 or iPhone 15 running Safari can typically handle a batch of fifteen to twenty-five HEIC photos at once before the tab's memory budget gets tight. Older iPhones with less RAM, including the iPhone XR or iPhone 11 base models, work best with smaller batches of eight to twelve at a time. For substantially larger batches, the practical answer is to transfer photos to a Mac or PC first and use FixTools in a desktop browser where sixteen gigabytes of system RAM is normal and batches of fifty to a hundred files run without difficulty.

Yes. Standard JPEG files produced by FixTools are accepted by every online photo printing service in common use, including Shutterfly, Snapfish, Mpix, Mixbook, Amazon Photos Prints, and the in-store photo kiosks at retailers like Walgreens, CVS, and Costco. The EXIF data including the original resolution, which is typically 48 megapixels on iPhone 15 Pro models and 12 megapixels on most older iPhones, is preserved through the conversion. Printing services read that resolution metadata to determine the maximum recommended print size and to flag any orders where the requested print dimensions would exceed the resolution available. Converting at quality 90 or higher is a safe default for prints up to 16 by 24 inches.

Yes, iCloud Photos syncs and stores whatever format the file is in, so a library mixing HEIC originals and converted JPG copies coexists without any sync issues. The one practical consideration is storage. iCloud charges by total bytes stored, and JPG copies of HEIC photos roughly double the storage each photo consumes, so converting the entire library and keeping both versions in iCloud will eat through your iCloud quota considerably faster. The cleaner approach is usually to keep HEIC originals as the canonical library and to produce JPG copies on demand only when a specific photo needs to be shared somewhere that does not accept HEIC, treating the JPGs as ephemeral working copies rather than permanent storage.