Is HEIC better quality than JPEG?

At the same file size, HEIC usually looks slightly better because HEVC is a more modern and efficient codec, and it can store 10-bit colour and HDR. At the same visual quality, HEIC is typically around half the size of JPEG. The difference is subtle in well-lit photos and more noticeable in low light or heavily compressed files.

Why are HEIC files smaller than JPEG?

HEIC is a container that stores images compressed with the HEVC codec, the same family used for 4K video. HEVC predicts image content far more cleverly than the older JPEG algorithm, so it reaches the same visual quality in roughly half the bits — which is why Apple adopted it to save space on iPhones.

Why won't some devices open HEIC files?

HEIC needs an HEVC decoder, and it is not universally bundled. Many Windows builds, older Android phones, some web apps and most print labs cannot open HEIC without an extra codec or extension. JPEG, by contrast, opens on essentially every device made in the last twenty-five years.

Should I convert HEIC to JPEG?

Convert when you need the photo to open somewhere that doesn't support HEIC — Windows, an older Android phone, a website form or a print service. Keep the HEIC original if you use Apple devices and have the storage, since it saves space and preserves HDR.

Does converting HEIC to JPEG lose quality?

A small amount, in theory. JPEG at 92% quality is visually lossless for photos and is accepted everywhere, but you lose HEIC's 10-bit HDR and gain a roughly doubled file size. For sharing, printing and uploading, the converted JPEG looks the same to almost every viewer.

Can I stop my phone from making HEIC files?

On iPhone go to Settings, then Camera, then Formats, and choose Most Compatible — future photos are saved as JPEG. On Android, check the camera app's settings for a HEIF or HEIC toggle. Either way, this only affects new photos; existing HEIC files still need converting.

HEIC vs JPEG: Size, Quality and Compatibility

Two formats, two philosophies

JPEG has been the default photo format since 1992. HEIC arrived in 2017 when Apple made it the default on the iPhone. They are not colleagues on a spectrum — they are twenty-five years of codec research apart. JPEG uses the discrete cosine transform to break an image into 8×8 blocks and discard detail the eye is unlikely to miss. HEVC, the codec inside HEIC, predicts whole regions and motion like a modern video compressor, which is why it can say the same thing in far fewer bits.

File size: where HEIC wins outright

This is the clearest difference and the reason Apple switched at all.

Same visual quality: a HEIC file is typically 40–60% smaller than the equivalent JPEG.
Same file size: HEIC usually looks noticeably cleaner, with fewer compression artifacts around edges.
In practice: an iPhone photo that would be 3.5 MB as a JPEG lands around 1.6–1.8 MB as HEIC. On a 256 GB phone holding tens of thousands of photos, that halving is the whole point.

Quality: more than just "better"

HEIC's advantage is not only efficiency. The format supports 10-bit colour and high dynamic range, while standard JPEG is limited to 8 bits. On a modern iPhone display that feeds into HDR stills with brighter highlights and smoother tonal transitions. JPEG simply cannot represent that range — which is one reason a converted JPEG can look slightly flatter than the original HEIC on the phone itself.

Where JPEG still holds up: in ordinary daylight, at sensible ISO, the two are hard to tell apart without zooming in. The HEIC edge is most visible in heavy compression, low light, and large smooth areas like skies, where JPEG's block-based approach shows banding sooner.

Compatibility: where JPEG wins outright

This is the trade-off that decides everything in the real world. HEIC needs an HEVC decoder, and that decoder is not universally present:

Windows doesn't ship the HEIF codec by default on many builds — File Explorer shows blank thumbnails and Photos reports an unsupported format.
Older Android phones, and even some current ones, cannot preview HEIC without help.
Web forms, email clients, CMSs and many print labs reject HEIC silently — the upload just fails.
JPEG, by contrast, opens on virtually every device, browser and service made since the late 1990s.

So the honest summary: HEIC is the better storage format, JPEG is the better delivery format. That's why the practical workflow is to keep HEIC for your archive and convert to JPEG whenever a photo has to leave your own device. The HEIC to JPG converter handles that in the browser, and if you're on Windows there's a dedicated Windows guide.

When to use each

Keep HEIC if you live entirely inside Apple's ecosystem, want the smallest library, and care about HDR.
Convert to JPEG before sending to a Windows user, uploading to a website, submitting to a printer, or posting anywhere that recompresses files anyway.
Choose PNG instead if you need transparency or pixel-perfect graphics — HEIC and JPEG are both photographic formats that discard detail. See PNG vs JPG for that decision.
Choose WebP if you're publishing to the web and want small files with wide browser support — though HEIC has the edge on iPhones specifically.

Where HEIC's HDR actually helps

Modern iPhones shoot and display HDR stills, and HEIC is how that brightness range is carried through the pipeline. On an iPhone or a compatible HDR screen, a HEIC photo can show specular highlights — a window, a reflection, a bright sky — at full brightness while keeping shadows open. A standard 8-bit JPEG cannot carry that range, so a converted JPEG can look slightly flatter on HDR hardware. On an ordinary SDR monitor the two are almost identical, which is why the difference only appears on newer displays.

Which files should you actually convert?

You don't have to touch your whole library. A sensible rule:

Convert anything you'll send to a Windows user, upload to a website, submit to a printer, or share through a form that might reject HEIC.
Keep as HEIC anything that lives inside Apple Photos, especially if storage is tight or you view it on an HDR display.
Keep both when a photo matters: HEIC as the archive, JPEG as the copy you can hand to anything.

A note on Live Photos and Portrait mode

HEIC is a container, not just a still-image format. A single .heic file can also hold a short video clip (a Live Photo), a burst of frames, a depth map for Portrait mode, and even a small image sequence. When you convert the still to JPEG you get the still only — the motion clip, depth data and HDR range stay behind in the original HEIC. So think of conversion as "extract the frame I need", not "replace the original": keeping the HEIC preserves everything the iPhone captured.

How to convert HEIC to JPEG

Public method: open the converter on this page, drop your .heic or .heif files in (hundreds at once if you like), leave JPG selected and the quality at 92%, then download. The decoding happens on your own machine via WebAssembly, so nothing is uploaded. After the page loads you can even go offline and it keeps working — a useful check for private or client photos. Three alternative approaches, including Apple's built-in export and a one-file-at-a-time method, are covered in the Mac guide.

HEIC vs JPEG: Size, Quality and Compatibility Compared