You AirDrop or email a few iPhone photos to a Windows laptop, and the files end in .heic. Photos won't open them, the upload form on some website rejects them, and the colleague you forwarded them to asks what format that is.
HEIC is Apple's default camera format. It's efficient, but outside Apple's own apps support is patchy. The usual fix is an "online HEIC converter," which means sending your personal photos to someone's server. You don't need to. Here's how to do it in the browser with the files staying on your machine, and how to come out with much smaller files while you're at it.
For this walkthrough I used three full-resolution iPhone photos (shot on an iPhone X, 12 Pro Max and 13 Pro, CC0 on Wikimedia Commons), saved as HEIC: 4032×3024 pixels, 3.1 MB, 4.1 MB and 4.7 MB.
1. Open the converter and drop in your HEIC files
Go to the HEIC to JPG converter on PixSip. No account needed. Drag your .heic files onto the drop area, or click it to pick them. The free plan takes up to 20 files at a time, each up to 10 MB, so full-size iPhone photos fit.
The decoding happens in the tab (WebAssembly), so nothing gets uploaded. If you want to check that yourself, load the page, switch off Wi-Fi, and then drop the files. It still works.
2. Pick your output formats: JPG, plus WebP and AVIF if you can use them
Below the drop area there's a "Convert my images automatically" switch with a row of formats. On this page JPG is already selected. There's no quality slider: PixSip encodes at one quality setting that it tuned against TinyPNG, and that setting is what does the shrinking.
I also ticked WebP and AVIF. The free plan writes up to three formats side by side, so you get all three versions of each photo from one drop and can keep whichever is smallest. Use JPG if the file is going somewhere picky (an old upload form, a printer, an email to someone on an old PC). WebP is fine for most websites and chat apps.
3. Check the results
Each photo gets a row with one box per format: the new size, the percentage saved, and a download button. A check mark sits on the smallest version of each photo. My three photos came out like this:
| Photo | HEIC | JPG | WebP | AVIF |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IMG_7364 (4032×3024) | 3.1 MB | 806.5 KB (−74%) | 684.2 KB (−78%) | 896.5 KB (−71%) |
| IMG_8097 (3024×4032) | 4.1 MB | 786.6 KB (−81%) | 879.5 KB (−79%) | 1.4 MB (−66%) |
| IMG_MILAN (3024×4032) | 4.7 MB | 645.5 KB (−86%) | 548.7 KB (−88%) | 728.6 KB (−85%) |
Taking the smallest file for each photo, the batch went from 11.9 MB to about 2 MB (PixSip's summary: "Saved 9.9 MB total · 83% smaller"). I didn't resize anything, and PixSip doesn't have a resize option. The outputs are still 4032×3024. All of the saving comes from re-encoding at that calibrated quality.
A caveat so you know what to expect: how much you save depends on how heavily the HEIC was compressed to begin with. In an earlier run with small (1440×960) HEIC samples that were already tightly compressed, the JPGs came out only 1–42% smaller. A full-size iPhone HEIC can also come out bigger as a JPG, because HEIC is the more efficient format. If that happens, try the WebP version.
4. Compare before you download (optional)
Click Compare on any row to get a slider view: the decoded original on one side, the smallest output on the other (here the 684 KB WebP against the 3.1 MB original). Drag the divider, or use Zoom 1:1, to check fine detail like text, skies and skin tones before you send the file to anyone.
5. Download one file or the whole batch
Click the button in any format box to save just that file, or Download 3 as ZIP (the number matches your batch) to grab everything. The ZIP is put together in the browser too, with every format you picked, named like IMG_7364-compressed.jpg.
Metadata such as GPS location is stripped automatically. That's usually what you want before posting a photo publicly, but keep the original HEIC if you need the date and location later.
If you only need to view HEIC on Windows
Converting isn't always the answer. If you just want to open the photos on your own PC, Microsoft's HEIF/HEVC extensions or an iPhone camera setting might suit you better. This walkthrough of the three ways to open HEIC files on Windows compares them. And if you're curious why the tool runs locally instead of on a server, the team explains it in why PixSip doesn't upload your photos.
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