HEIC vs JPEG: Which Format Should You Use?
How Apple’s HEIC compares to JPEG for quality, size, and compatibility — and when converting makes sense.
Why your iPhone saves photos as HEIC
If you've pulled photos off an iPhone and found files ending in .heic instead of .jpg, that's not a glitch. Since iOS 11 in 2017, iPhones have defaulted to HEIC — the High Efficiency Image Container — for photos shot with the camera. It stores images using HEVC (H.265) compression, the same technology behind modern 4K video, and Apple's stated reason for the switch was simple: comparable quality at roughly half the file size of JPEG.
Most people never notice, because Apple papers over the difference. Share a photo through Messages, Mail, or AirDrop to a device that can't handle HEIC, and iOS quietly converts it to JPEG on the way out. The format only becomes visible — and occasionally a problem — when you move files manually: copying them to a Windows PC over USB, syncing through a cloud drive, or downloading originals from iCloud.
What HEIC does better
Efficiency is the headline feature. HEVC compression is a generation ahead of the 1992-era JPEG codec, so a HEIC photo typically takes up far less space at the same visual quality. Across a library of tens of thousands of photos, that difference is real money in iCloud storage tiers and real room on a 128 GB phone.
HEIC also carries more than pixels. It supports 10-bit color, which is why the smooth sky gradients from an iPhone's HDR pipeline hold up without visible banding, and it can store extra data alongside the image — the depth map behind Portrait mode, for example. JPEG is limited to 8-bit color and has no standard way to carry any of that.
Where JPEG still wins: everywhere else
JPEG's advantage is blunt but decisive: it opens everywhere. Every browser, every operating system, every photo kiosk, every government upload portal, every fifteen-year-old digital picture frame. Three decades of universal support mean a .jpg file is never the reason something fails.
HEIC support outside Apple's ecosystem is genuinely spotty. Windows usually needs a codec extension from the Microsoft Store before the Photos app will open one. Chrome, Firefox, and Edge won't display HEIC on a web page. Android gained read support around Android 9, but plenty of apps and older devices still choke on it. Part of the problem is licensing: HEVC is patent-encumbered, so many vendors simply decline to pay for support, while JPEG is effectively free for everyone to implement.
The failures you will actually run into
The pattern is consistent: HEIC works fine until it leaves Apple hardware by a route Apple doesn't control. Common examples: an insurance or marketplace upload form that rejects the file outright; a photo emailed as an original attachment that a Windows recipient can't open; a print shop kiosk that doesn't see the images on your USB drive; a website that shows a broken image icon because browsers can't render HEIC.
None of these are hypothetical — they're the situations that send people searching for a converter in the first place. The frustrating part is the inconsistency: the same photo that AirDropped perfectly to a friend's MacBook gets bounced by a job application portal an hour later.
When to convert, and which format to pick
A sensible split: keep HEIC as your storage format and convert copies when you share. Leaving your library in HEIC preserves the space savings and avoids re-encoding photos that are already fine where they live. Convert on the way out, and only the specific files that need to travel.
As for the output format, JPG is the default answer — maximum compatibility for email, upload forms, and printing. Choose PNG when you need lossless output for a graphic or a screenshot, with the caveat that photographic PNGs get large. Choose WebP for images headed to a website you control; it's supported by all modern browsers and usually smaller than JPEG at similar quality. One note on quality: HEIC to JPG is a lossy-to-lossy conversion, so keep the quality setting high — around 90 — and the difference will be invisible in normal viewing.
The practical recommendation
If you mostly share through Messages, AirDrop, and social apps, leave the camera on High Efficiency and enjoy the storage savings; iOS handles conversion when it matters. If you constantly send originals to Windows users or upload to picky systems, switching the camera to Most Compatible (Settings, then Camera, then Formats) makes the phone shoot JPEG directly and sidesteps the whole issue, at the cost of larger files.
For everything already saved as HEIC, Convertmaxxing converts HEIC to JPG, PNG, or WebP directly in your browser. The conversion runs locally through WebAssembly, so your photos are never uploaded to a server — worth knowing if the files are private. It's free and requires no signup. You can also strip EXIF metadata, including GPS location, during conversion. One limitation to be aware of: the conversion is one-way. Browsers can decode HEIC but can't create it, so no in-browser tool — this one included — can turn a JPEG back into a HEIC file.