Why won't Windows open HEIC photos?
A HEIC photo is compressed with HEVC, the codec behind a lot of modern video, and many Windows PCs lack the parts needed to read it. The Photos app, File Explorer thumbnails and many older programs need two extensions from the Microsoft Store before they can show a HEIC file: HEIF Image Extensions for the file format, and HEVC Video Extensions for the compression inside it.
An iPhone saves photos as HEIC when its camera is set to High Efficiency, and Apple's support documentation says the iPhone 7 and later can capture the format on iOS 11 or later. So the problem usually appears the first time photos are copied from an iPhone to a Windows PC, or sent as attachments to someone who uses one.
How do you convert HEIC to JPG in a browser?
The quickest way needs nothing installed. Chrome, Edge and Firefox on Windows can all run the HEIC to JPG converter, which reads HEIC with a decoder that runs inside the page.
- Open the HEIC to JPG converter in Chrome, Edge or Firefox on your PC. HEIC to JPG converter
- Drop in the HEIC photos, or a whole folder's worth. The first one waits a moment while the decoder downloads from File4Edit's own site; the photos themselves are never uploaded.
- Leave JPEG selected, and keep the quality at 0.82 unless you need smaller files or prints.
- Press Apply, then Download. One photo saves as a JPEG, and a batch arrives as a ZIP to open in File Explorer.
The JPEGs open in Photos, Paint, Word, email and every upload form. They carry no EXIF data, so the camera details and the GPS location of each photo stay behind, which is usually what you want before sharing them.
How do you make Windows open HEIC files itself?
If you would rather view HEIC photos without converting them, install the two Microsoft Store extensions, HEIF Image Extensions and HEVC Video Extensions. With both in place, Photos opens HEIC files and File Explorer shows their thumbnails. Some PCs come with the HEVC extension already installed, and on others it is sold in the Store.
Viewing is not the same as sharing. The people and websites you send the photos to may not have those extensions, so a JPEG is still the safer thing to send.
How do you stop your iPhone saving HEIC?
With Apple's own setting. On the iPhone, open Settings, then Camera, then Formats, and choose Most Compatible, and new photos are saved as JPEG from then on. The photos you already took stay HEIC, and the converter handles those.
There is a second setting for copying photos over a cable. Apple's documentation says an iPhone may convert HEIC photos to JPEG as they are imported to a PC, and that choosing Keep Originals, under Settings, then Apps, then Photos, stops it. Leave that on Automatic if you want JPEGs to arrive on Windows.
Should you convert to JPG or PNG?
JPG for sharing, printing and uploading: it is far smaller, and at quality 0.82 it looks very nearly the same as the HEIC. Choose the HEIC to PNG converter only if you plan to edit the photo and re-save it several times, since PNG loses nothing more on each save, or if the image has a transparent background.
One difference to know about: Chrome, Edge and Firefox decode HEIC without applying the photo's color profile, so the most saturated colors of a wide-gamut iPhone photo can look a little flatter in the JPEG than they did on the phone.