TidyToolsWhy your iPhone photos won't open on Windows
Since iOS 11, iPhones have saved photos as HEIC rather than JPG. It is a genuinely better format — roughly half the file size for the same picture — and on an iPhone or a Mac you never notice, because Apple handles it silently everywhere.
Move those files anywhere else and the illusion ends. The picture data inside a HEIC is compressed with HEVC, the same codec used for 4K video, and HEVC is covered by a thicket of patents whose licence fees are charged per device. That is why Windows ships without the decoder, why Chrome and Edge refuse to display a HEIC in the browser, and why Microsoft's own extension for it sits behind a small charge in the Store. It isn't a bug or a missing update. Nobody wants to pay the licence on your behalf.
This page pays no licence either — it uses an open-source decoder compiled to run inside your browser. You drop the file in, your own machine does the decoding, and a JPG comes back out. Nothing is sent anywhere, because there is nowhere for it to be sent.
Why not just email them to yourself?
That does work, and it's worth knowing why: when an iPhone sends a photo through Mail or most messaging apps, iOS quietly converts it to JPG on the way out. The catch is what else it does on the way out — the image gets recompressed and often shrunk, so what arrives is smaller and softer than what you shot. Converting the original file keeps every pixel the camera recorded.
What happens to the date, the camera and the location
A photo carries a block of metadata called EXIF: when it was taken, which camera and lens, the exposure settings, and — if location services were on — precisely where you were standing. Most converters throw all of that away, which is why converted photos so often land in your gallery dated today and sorted to the bottom.
With Keep date taken & camera info ticked, that block is copied across intact, so the JPGs sort into your library in the right order and still know what took them. Untick it and the output carries nothing at all — no date, no camera, no coordinates. That is the right choice for anything you're about to post publicly, and if you'd like to see exactly what your photos are currently revealing before you decide, the photo metadata viewer will show you.
One thing is always rewritten: the orientation flag. HEIC files record rotation as an instruction rather than by turning the pixels, so the conversion turns the picture the right way up for real and then resets the flag. Without that step, half the photos you converted would come out sideways.
Frequently asked questions
Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
No. The decoder is a piece of software that runs on this page, in your browser, on your own machine — the same way a calculator on this site works. There is no server, no account and nothing stored. Load the page once, turn off your internet, and it still converts.
Is there a limit on how many I can convert?
No limit and no watermark. Drop in a whole camera roll if you want. They're converted one after another so your browser stays responsive, and very large batches simply take longer — the only real ceiling is your device's memory.
Will I lose quality?
Converting to PNG is lossless — the pixels come out exactly as the decoder produced them. JPG is a lossy format, so there is always some loss, but at the default quality of 92 it is invisible in normal viewing. Below about 80 you may start to notice softness around edges and in flat areas like skies.
Why is the JPG bigger than the HEIC?
Because HEIC is simply better at compression — that's the whole reason Apple adopted it. Expect a JPG to land at roughly one and a half to two times the size for the same picture. If size matters more than compatibility, keep the originals as well.
Does it work on Live Photos?
Yes, but only the still frame. A Live Photo is a HEIC image with a short video stored alongside it; this converts the photograph and ignores the video. Some HEIC files also hold a burst of several images — in that case you get the primary one, which is the frame your phone shows you.
I'm on an iPhone and it converted to JPG before I even chose it.
That's iOS doing you a favour. When you pick a photo through Safari's file picker, iOS often converts it to JPG automatically, so this page receives a JPG and has nothing left to do. To get at the true original, use Files rather than Photos, or set Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC to Keep Originals.
Can I stop my phone making HEIC files at all?
Yes. On an iPhone, go to Settings → Camera → Formats and choose Most Compatible. From then on the camera shoots JPG. You'll roughly double the storage each photo uses, which is the trade you're making — but if you constantly move photos onto a Windows machine it's usually the right trade.
What about AVIF, HEIF and .hif files?
All handled. HEIF is the container format; HEIC is that container holding HEVC-compressed pictures, which is what iPhones write. Sony cameras use .hif for the same thing. AVIF is the same container with a different, royalty-free codec inside — most browsers can already read it, and this page converts it either way.