HEIC vs JPG
HEIC files are about half the size of JPEGs at the same quality, which is why Apple made them the default. The cost is compatibility: plenty of software still cannot open them. Here is the trade-off and how to work around it.
The short version
Technically HEIC wins on almost every measure. JPEG wins the only one that often matters in practice: it works.
- HEIC is roughly half the file size of JPEG at equivalent visual quality.
- HEIC supports 16-bit colour; JPEG is limited to 8-bit.
- HEIC supports transparency and image sequences such as Live Photos; JPEG supports neither.
- JPEG opens absolutely everywhere. HEIC does not.
Why your iPhone photos are HEIC
Apple switched the default camera format to HEIC in iOS 11. The compression is genuinely better — it uses the same underlying technology as modern video codecs, which is far more sophisticated than JPEG's method from 1992. On a 256 GB phone full of photos, halving the storage is a real benefit.
The format is not Apple-proprietary; it is an open standard. Support outside Apple's ecosystem has simply been slow.
Why Windows says it cannot open the file
Windows 10 and 11 can display HEIC, but only with the HEIF Image Extensions installed from the Microsoft Store — and the codec needed for the video-derived compression has historically been a paid add-on because of patent licensing on HEVC.
That licensing is also why many otherwise-capable image tools cannot read HEIC: the decoder carries patent obligations that open-source software cannot easily satisfy. It is a legal problem rather than a technical one, which is why it has persisted so long.
Fastest fix: stop shooting HEIC
If compatibility matters more to you than storage, change it once and stop thinking about it. On your iPhone open Settings, then Camera, then Formats, and choose Most Compatible. New photos are captured as JPEG. Existing ones stay HEIC.
There is also a quieter setting that solves most cases: Settings, then Photos, then scroll to Transfer to Mac or PC and choose Automatic. Your phone then converts HEIC to JPEG on the fly when transferring over cable.
Converting photos you already have
An honest note: Filembly does not currently convert HEIC. The image library we use ships without the HEVC decoder for the licensing reasons described above, and we would rather say so than advertise a conversion that fails on real iPhone files. For everything else — JPG, PNG and WebP in any direction — our converter handles it.
- Email them to yourself — Mail converts to JPEG automatically in many configurations.
- Upload to Google Photos, then download; you get JPEG back.
- On a Mac, open in Preview and use File then Export, choosing JPEG.
- AirDrop to a Mac with the transfer setting above set to Automatic.
Should you keep HEIC?
If you live inside Apple's ecosystem and mostly share through Apple's apps, keep it. You get better photos in half the space and never see the format.
If you regularly send photos to Windows users, upload to forms that reject the format, or edit in older software, switch to Most Compatible. The storage saving is not worth the recurring friction.