HEIC vs JPG: Which Should Your Photos Use?
By Rehan Shah, Updated , Published
HEIC gives you double the photos per gigabyte; JPG gives you a file that opens on anything made in the last thirty years. Here's how to decide which trade-off is yours.
The one-sentence answer
HEIC if your photos live inside the Apple ecosystem; JPG if they regularly travel outside it. You can change your mind any time, in either direction.
Side by side
| HEIC | JPG | |
|---|---|---|
| File size (same photo) | Roughly half | Baseline |
| Quality at that size | Comparable or better | Baseline |
| Apple devices | Native | Full support |
| Windows | Needs codec extensions | Native |
| Android & older software | Patchy | Universal |
| Upload forms & portals | Often rejected | Accepted everywhere |
| Extra capabilities | Live Photos, depth data, bursts | None, just the image |
The case for HEIC
Storage. At half the size per photo, a 128 GB iPhone effectively doubles its photo capacity, iCloud fills half as fast, and backups shrink. Quality per byte is genuinely better: this is a more modern compressor, not a corner cut.
The case for JPG
Everything else. JPG's superpower is that nothing rejects it: thirty years of software, every printer and kiosk, every government portal, every device your relatives own. If a photo's destiny is to be shared, submitted, or printed, JPG skips a conversion step every single time.
Switching and converting
To change what your iPhone shoots, open Settings → Camera → Formats. High Efficiency is HEIC, Most Compatible is JPG. For photos you already have, our HEIC to JPG converter runs in your browser (no upload, no app) and handles batches. For the format's full background, see What is HEIC?.
What you lose when you convert HEIC to JPG
Converting is a re-encode, not a rename, and three things can change. Quality: JPG is lossy, so the converted copy is a second generation. At a high quality setting the difference is invisible, but keep the HEIC original if you might edit the photo again. Extras: a HEIC container can hold a Live Photo's video, depth data for portrait mode, and burst sequences. A JPG holds one still image, so those are dropped. Metadata: capture date, camera settings, and location travel in EXIF tags, and whether they survive depends on the converter. Ours, like most browser converters, writes a fresh JPG without the original EXIF, which is worth knowing before you submit a photo that needs its date preserved.
Why your HEIC photos already arrive as JPG sometimes
iPhones quietly convert in several situations. Sharing to a non-Apple device by Mail or Messages usually sends JPG. Copying to a PC over a cable follows Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC: Automatic converts to JPG on the way, Keep Originals copies the HEIC files as they are. AirDrop between Apple devices keeps HEIC. So the same photo can show up as .heic on your laptop and .jpg in a colleague's inbox, which is not corruption, just two different paths.
Which camera setting to pick
| Your situation | Setting | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Photos stay on Apple devices and iCloud | High Efficiency (HEIC) | Half the storage, no compatibility cost |
| Windows PC at home or work, shared drives | Most Compatible (JPG) | Nothing to install, nothing to convert |
| Frequent uploads to portals, forms, marketplaces | Most Compatible (JPG) | Upload forms reject HEIC more than anything else |
| Storage is tight and you convert rarely | High Efficiency (HEIC) | Convert the few that need it, keep the rest small |
Common questions
- Is HEIC better quality than JPG?
- At the same file size, yes: HEIC uses a newer compressor and keeps more detail per byte, and it stores 10-bit colour where JPG is limited to 8-bit. At the same visual quality, HEIC is about half the size. What JPG has over it is not quality but universal support.
- Does converting HEIC to JPG lose quality?
- Slightly, because JPG is lossy and the conversion is a re-encode. At a high quality setting the loss is not visible. Keep the HEIC original if you may edit the photo later, and avoid converting the same file back and forth.
- Can I convert a JPG back to HEIC?
- Yes, on a Mac with Preview or on an iPhone through third-party apps, but the detail JPG discarded is not recovered. Converting to HEIC only shrinks the file; it does not restore quality.
- Why does my iPhone photo show as JPG when I share it?
- iOS converts HEIC to JPG when sharing to destinations that may not support it, such as Mail, Messages to Android, or a cable transfer with the Automatic setting. AirDrop to another Apple device keeps the HEIC file.
Try it yourself
These live under Image tools, alongside the rest of the iphone photos & heic guides on the guides page.