How to Convert HEIC to JPG on Windows (or Open It)

Need to convert HEIC to JPG on Windows? You can make a compatible JPG copy in your browser without installing a codec. If you only need to view the original, add the extensions Windows Photos needs instead.

Your iPhone saves photos in a format called HEIC that Windows won’t read out of the box, and Microsoft left the support out because the codec doing the compression, HEVC, carries patent licence fees it didn’t want to absorb into the price of the OS. The fees didn’t go away. They just landed on you instead.

Two fixes are worth your time, and which one you want depends on whether HEIC is a one-off annoyance or a weekly fact of your life.

Convert in the browser and move on

Open heic.site, drag the files in, and JPGs come back. That’s the whole procedure.

Everything runs on your own computer and nothing is uploaded anywhere. The free tier takes three files per batch, returned as a ZIP. There’s no cap on how many batches you run. HEIC to JPG is the conversion nearly everyone on Windows is after, and the HEIC vs JPG quality comparison covers where to leave the quality slider. Since it’s just a website, it works the same on an eight-year-old Windows machine as on a new one, which counts for something given the sort of PC these files tend to land on. If you’ve got hundreds to get through, the batch guide is the faster route.

That’s the answer when HEIC turns up occasionally, because somebody sent you iPhone photos.

Making Windows open them itself

If you’d rather never think about this again, teach Windows the codec. Open the Microsoft Store, search “HEVC Video Extensions”, and install the one published by Microsoft Corporation rather than one of the imitations beside it. It costs $0.99 — the only part of this whole business that takes money off you. A restart sometimes helps if Explorer thumbnails don’t refresh straight away. Once it’s in, HEIC behaves like every other image on the machine: thumbnails in Explorer, the Photos app, Paint, the lot.

Check for the free version before you pay. Plenty of PCs ship with “HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer” already installed by the manufacturer. Search that phrase in the Store. If the button reads “Installed”, you owe Microsoft nothing.

A third-party viewer gets you to the same place and does rather more besides. IrfanView reads HEIC once you add the plugin pack, and it batch-converts too. XnView handles a few hundred formats and stays free for personal use. Either one opens a photo faster than the Photos app manages on a good day, so I’d keep one around whatever your iPhone is doing.

Stopping the problem at the source

You can ask the iPhone owner to switch their camera over, at Settings, Camera, Formats, Most Compatible (here’s why Apple picked HEIC in the first place). Their storage use roughly doubles and Live Photos stop working. Hardly anyone agrees to it.

Changing how the photos reach you works better. Send them through iMessage, email or AirDrop to a non-Apple device and iOS quietly converts to JPEG on the way out — the conversion you were about to do yourself, done for free at the other end. HEIC only really bites when the files come over a cable, or down from iCloud. Ask for them by email and the problem never starts.