How to convert HEIC to JPG on a Mac

A Mac has read HEIC since macOS High Sierra, so if the file will not open, it is not your Mac that has the problem. You are converting for somebody else: a Windows colleague, an upload form, a print shop, a CMS that was configured in 2015.

That matters for how you go about it. You want a copy in JPEG, with the original left alone. Every method below does that, and two of the four have a trap where they do not unless you set them up correctly.

If you are not sure what the format is or why it exists, what HEIC files are explains it. Everything here is macOS-specific; how to open HEIC files covers the other platforms.

Method 1: Preview

Preview is already the default viewer, and it exports.

1. Double-click the HEIC file.
2. File, Export.
3. Set Format to JPEG. A Quality slider appears; around 80 percent is a sensible default and the difference from maximum is invisible in a photograph.
4. Give it a name and save.

For a batch: select all the files in Finder, press Return to open them together in one Preview window, then Edit, Select All in the thumbnail sidebar. The File menu now reads Export Selected Images. Choose a destination folder, set Format to JPEG, and it writes the lot in one pass. This is the fastest built-in way to convert a few hundred photos and almost nobody knows the menu item changes when multiple thumbnails are selected.

If the sidebar is not visible, View, Thumbnails.

Method 2: The Finder Quick Action

On macOS Monterey and later there is a conversion built into the right-click menu, and for one to twenty files it is the quickest route there is.

1. Select the files in Finder.
2. Right-click, Quick Actions, Convert Image.
3. Format: JPEG. Image Size: Actual Size unless you want it smaller.
4. There is a checkbox for Preserve Metadata. Leave it on to keep the date, camera and location; turn it off if you are sending the photo to a stranger and would rather not include where it was taken.
5. Convert.

New JPEG files appear next to the originals, which stay untouched. The Image Size options are worth noticing: choosing Medium or Small resizes and re-encodes in one step, which is often exactly what an upload form needs.

Method 3: Image Capture, at import time

The best conversion is the one you never have to do. If your photos arrive on the Mac from an iPhone over a cable, the phone decides which format to hand over.

On the iPhone: Settings, Photos, scroll to the bottom, Transfer to Mac or PC.

• Automatic — the phone converts to JPEG as it transfers. Everything that lands in Image Capture is already a JPEG.
• Keep Originals — the phone sends the HEIC untouched.

Set it to Automatic, then open Image Capture (it is in Applications), pick the iPhone in the sidebar, choose a destination folder at the bottom of the window, and Import All. You get JPEGs directly, with no conversion step and no second copy of anything on the Mac.

The trade-off is that the conversion happens on the phone, so you never get the original HEIC onto the Mac at all. If you want to archive the originals and hand out JPEGs, leave it on Keep Originals and convert with one of the other methods.

Image Capture is also the tool to use when Photos keeps hijacking the connection: it copies files into a plain folder rather than into a library, which is usually what you actually want when the destination is an email or a form.

Method 4: An Automator Quick Action, for the recurring case

If you convert the same kind of batch every week, build the action once.

1. Open Automator, New Document, Quick Action.
2. At the top: “Workflow receives current image files in Finder”.
3. Drag in Copy Finder Items, and pick a destination such as Desktop or a folder called Converted.
4. Drag in Change Type of Images below it, and set Type to JPEG.
5. Save it as something like “Convert to JPEG”.

It now appears under Quick Actions in the Finder right-click menu, on any selection of images.

Do not skip step 3. Change Type of Images converts in place and deletes the original HEIC. Automator will offer to add the Copy step for you when you drag in the conversion action, and dismissing that prompt is how people lose originals. The Copy Finder Items action is the safety net, and it has to come first in the workflow.

The same workflow saved as a Folder Action instead will convert anything dropped into a watched folder automatically, which is worth setting up if you are shuttling photos to somebody on Windows every week.

The one-line version, if you use Terminal

sips -s format jpeg photo.heic --out photo.jpg

sips ships with macOS. For a whole folder:

for f in *.heic; do sips -s format jpeg "$f" --out "${f%.heic}.jpg"; done

It is the fastest method by a wide margin, and it keeps EXIF data.

What gets lost in the conversion

Live Photos become still images. The motion is stored as a separate video component and JPEG has nowhere to put it. Nothing warns you; the file simply comes back still.

Portrait mode depth data is discarded. You cannot re-edit the background blur afterwards. The blur that was already rendered stays.

Burst sequences keep one frame. Usually the one marked as the favorite.

The file roughly doubles in size. HEIC is about half the size of an equivalent JPEG, which is the entire reason Apple adopted it. Converting gives that back. If the target has an upload limit, that is the number that matters, and how to reduce file size covers what to do about it.

None of this affects the original as long as you converted a copy, which is why the in-place trap in Method 4 is the only genuinely dangerous part of any of this.