How to open HEIC photos on Windows (and convert them to JPG)
Why iPhone HEIC photos will not open on Windows, three ways to fix it, and how to convert them to JPG privately in your browser.
Updated: 3 November 2026
If you copy photos from an iPhone to a Windows PC and they will not open, or a website refuses them with an “unsupported file type” message, the cause is almost always the same: the photos are in HEIC format. This guide explains what that means and three ways to fix it, from the quickest to the most permanent.
Why HEIC photos do not open everywhere
HEIC is the format iPhones use by default. It keeps good quality in a smaller file than JPG, which is why Apple chose it. The catch is that it relies on a newer compression method, and not every Windows version, app or website supports it out of the box. Depending on your version of Windows, you may need an extra component from the Microsoft Store before the Photos app can show HEIC files, and many upload forms, older programs and some printing services still accept only JPG or PNG.
Renaming a file from .heic to .jpg does not help. The extension changes, but the data inside is still HEIC, so the file stays unreadable. It has to be converted.
Option 1: convert the photos to JPG
This is the most reliable fix, because a JPG opens almost everywhere. With the HEIC to JPG Converter you can do it in your browser without installing anything:
- Add one or more .heic or .heif photos. You can drop a whole batch at once.
- Choose JPG for the widest compatibility, or PNG or WebP if you prefer.
- Optionally set a maximum width. A photo straight from a modern phone is often far larger than a website or email needs.
- Download the JPG files one by one, or all together as a ZIP.
Your photos are converted on your own device and are not uploaded, which matters if they are personal. A few limits are worth knowing: only the main picture of each file is exported (not the Live Photo video), metadata and colour profiles are not copied, so the converted file will not carry the original location data but some wide-colour photos can look slightly less vivid, and very large files (above 50 MB) are refused.
Option 2: add HEIC support to Windows
If you only want to look at the photos on your PC, you can install Microsoft’s image extensions from the Microsoft Store so that Photos and File Explorer can open and preview HEIC files. This does not change the files, and it does not help with websites or apps that reject HEIC, so you will still need Option 1 whenever you have to upload or share a photo.
Option 3: make the iPhone save JPG instead
On the iPhone, open Settings, then Camera, then Formats, and choose “Most Compatible”. New photos will be saved as JPG. Photos you already took stay as HEIC, and JPG files are usually larger, so you trade some storage for convenience. iOS also has a Photos setting for transferring to a PC (Settings, Photos, “Transfer to Mac or PC”) that can convert files automatically when you copy them over a cable.
After converting
A converted photo from a modern phone can still be several megabytes. If a form or email has a size limit, use the Image Compressor to reduce it to a target size such as 200 KB, or the Image Converter (JPG, PNG, WebP) if you need another format. Before you share ordinary JPG photos directly, check what they reveal with the EXIF Viewer & Metadata Remover: JPG files can carry the date, the device and sometimes the exact location where the photo was taken.