If you have ever copied photos off an iPhone onto a Windows PC and got a row of empty rectangles or "file format not supported", you have met HEIC. It is the format iPhones have used since iOS 11 for photos: same quality as JPG at roughly half the file size. Apple chose it to save space on the phone, and it has no idea that the rest of the world did not follow.
The good news is that you never actually need to "open" HEIC in the sense of a viewer. You need the photos as JPG or PNG, which is what everything understands — printers, websites, WhatsApp, resume uploads, Office. Here is how to do that on any PC, for free, without uploading your camera roll to a stranger's server.
Why Windows won’t show HEIC by default
HEIC stores pictures using the HEVC video codec. Microsoft does include a path to decoding it, but it is patchy: older Windows 10 builds ship without the right extension, the "HEVC Video Extensions" app in the Store is paid on many machines, and some edition images simply never got the codec. Windows 11 is better, but compatibility still varies by build and by manufacturer image.
The result is that the file sits there with a double-tap doing nothing, which is exactly what you see on a fresh PC that has never been configured for it.
What to do about it
Three options, in order of how little installing they involve:
| Approach | Cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Convert to JPG in the browser | Free, no install | Any PC, any handful of photos, no account |
| Install the free HEIF/HEVC extensions from the Store | Free or a few cents, needs admin rights | Opening HEIC directly in Photos long-term |
| Change the iPhone setting | Free | Stopping the problem at the source |
Option 1: convert in the browser (fastest)
Open HEIC to JPG in any modern browser, drop in one or a hundred HEIC files, and each photo is decoded and re-encoded to JPG right on your device. The page never sends the photos anywhere. Quality maps directly — the default is a high-quality JPG that looks identical to the HEIC on screen.
If you also want the files smaller than the originals for an upload or an email, run the results through Image Compressor afterwards. A 3 MB HEIC typically becomes a 1.5–2.5 MB JPG; compression can take it to a few hundred KB for a form upload.
Option 2: install the codec
Search the Microsoft Store for "HEIF Image Extensions" and "HEVC Video Extensions". On Windows 11 one of them is usually already present. If your account allows Store installs and you want Pictures to open HEIC natively, this is the set-and-forget route. The HEVC one is sometimes paid; the HEIF one is free. Combined they let the Photos app show HEIC like any other image.
Option 3: stop the phone from making them
On the iPhone: Settings → Camera → Formats → change from "High Efficiency" to "Most Compatible". New photos will come out as JPG instead of HEIC. This is the right fix if you mostly move photos to a PC, and the wrong fix if you want the storage savings. Note that it does not convert existing HEIC photos — the ones already on the phone stay HEIC until you transfer or convert them.
You can also keep HEIC and export on demand: when sharing from the Photos app, the phone usually sends a JPG copy automatically. That is fine for one or two pictures and tedious for a holiday album.
Does converting lose quality?
Barely, and not in any way you can see. HEIC and JPG both compress with loss; HEIC just does it about twice as efficiently per megabyte. Decoding a HEIC to JPG is a re-encode of the decoded pixels — you lose a little, the same way you lose a little saving any photo twice. At high quality settings the difference is invisible at 100% zoom, and nothing in the metadata (date, location, camera) is touched unless you ask for it.
How to convert a lot of photos at once
- Copy the HEICs to one folder on the PC, e.g.
Pictures\iphone-export. - Drop the whole folder into HEIC to JPG. Files are processed in sequence and stay on your device.
- Check a few edge cases — Live Photos come out as still JPGs (the motion part is separate and stays on the phone), and portrait-mode HEICs keep their depth effect only if you also keep the
.HEICoriginal. - Delete nothing yet. Keep the originals until you have confirmed the JPGs open everywhere they need to.
One reason not to use an upload service
The average "free HEIC converter" site works by uploading your photos to their server, converting them, and giving you a download link. Your photos may be cached on that server for minutes or forever, and you have no way to know which. A browser-based converter does the same job inside the tab — the files never cross the network, so there is nothing to leak, nothing to delete later, and no account to create. That is the whole reason this one exists.