iPhone photos that open everywhere.

Convert iPhone HEIC photos to JPG in your browser, fifty at a time, on Windows, Mac, Android or Linux. Nothing is uploaded; location data is removed.

By Suraj Kumar1 November 20264 min read

Sage paper folders and a glass padlock on a warm tabletop

iPhones save photos as HEIC, a format that keeps them small. Then you send one to a Windows laptop, an online form or an older app, and it will not open. The KeepSimp image converter turns HEIC into JPG in your browser, on any computer or phone, and the photos never leave your device.

Why your photos are HEIC.

Since iOS 11, iPhones and iPads save photos in the HEIF format, with files ending in .heic. Apple chose it because it keeps the same picture in a smaller file. Apple's own apps read it, but much other software, and many upload forms, still expect JPG.

If you would rather your iPhone saved JPG from now on, Apple's settings have a choice for that: in Settings, Camera, Formats, choose Most Compatible. Photos you already took stay HEIC, which is where a converter helps.

Convert them in three steps.

Open the image converter and drop your photos, up to fifty at a time, each up to 50 MB. Under What do you need?, choose Opens everywhere, which saves JPG.

Each photo gets its own row with its result. Download them one by one, or everything as one ZIP. A file that cannot be read says so and does not stop the others.

Safari reads HEIC itself. In Chrome, Edge and Firefox, on Windows, Android or Linux, the converter reads it with libheif, an open decoder that runs inside the page, so it works where the system has no HEIC support of its own.

Make big photos smaller while you are there.

A modern phone photo is often over 4,000 pixels wide. If the JPGs are for email or a website, turn on Make big photos smaller? and choose 2,560, 1,920 or 1,280 pixels on the longest side. Smaller photos are never enlarged.

For prints, leave the size as it is and choose High under the quality in More options.

What changes besides the format.

The new JPG is written from the pixels alone. The camera details, the date taken and the location are not copied into it, which is good for privacy when you share a photo. If you need those details, for sorting a photo library by date, keep the HEIC originals.

Colours are converted to sRGB, the colour space nearly everything shows correctly. JPG cannot be see-through; photos rarely need that, but a cut-out would get a white background.

PNG or PDF instead.

Choose Sharp edges for PNG when every pixel must stay exact, for screenshots or pictures you will edit further. The files are larger than JPG.

If a form wants a document, the PDF maker puts HEIC photos onto pages and makes one PDF of them.

A little less theory. A little more doing.

Try it on your own terms, with a free browser tool.

Try the tool