What is HEIC, and why won't your iPhone photos work?
HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Container. It's the format iPhones have used since iOS 11 (released in 2017) to save photos. HEIC files are about half the size of JPGs at the same quality — which is great for your phone storage, but causes headaches everywhere else.
Most websites and photo book services accept JPGs without exception. Many also accept HEIC now, but not all do. So you upload your iPhone vacation photos, some silently fail, and you're left guessing why.
That's the whole problem. Apple uses one format. The rest of the web uses another. The fix is converting your photos from HEIC to JPG — which is exactly what this tool does.
If you're just trying to fix this
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Convert iPhone photos →A bit more, if you want it
Why did Apple do this? HEIC compresses photos more efficiently than JPG without losing quality. A typical iPhone photo is 2–3 MB as HEIC vs 4–6 MB as JPG. On a 128 GB phone full of photos, that adds up to gigabytes saved.
Why don't websites accept it? Most do now. Some legacy sites and older photo book services are still running upload code from before HEIC existed. The format itself is well-supported in modern browsers, just patchily supported in some older web apps.
Will Apple ever switch back to JPG? No. The efficiency gain is real and Apple has every incentive to keep HEIC. The fix is on the receiving side — either the website adds HEIC support, or you convert before uploading.
Are HEIC photos worse quality?Slightly better, actually. HEIC supports 10-bit color (more shades) where JPG is 8-bit. Converting to JPG drops some color depth, but for prints and screens it's imperceptible.
Why does iOS Safari sometimes auto-convert? When you upload photos through a website on iOS, Safari silently converts HEIC to JPG before handing them off. So if you're uploading from your phone, you may not need this tool. The friction shows up when you transfer photos from iPhone to a Mac or PC, then upload from there — the photos stay HEIC through that transfer.