HEIC vs JPEG
Both store photographs, but they make different trade-offs. Here is where they actually differ, and how to pick.
Short answer
Keep HEIC on the phone, send JPEG everywhere else. This is not a quality decision — it is a compatibility one, and you rarely get a vote.
Why this comes up
Almost nobody searches this because they are choosing a format for a new project. They search it because an iPhone handed them a .heic file and something downstream refused it — an upload form, a Windows machine, a client who opened the attachment and saw nothing. The honest framing is that HEIC already won on the technical merits and lost on reach. Apple shipped it as the camera default in iOS 11 and the rest of the ecosystem never caught up.
Side by side
| Property | HEIC | JPEG |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossy | Lossy |
| Transparency | Yes | No |
| Typical file size | 50-60% of an equivalent JPEG | 100% of an equivalent JPEG |
| Compatibility | Native on Apple devices; often rejected by web uploads | Opens everywhere, including decades-old software |
| Usually comes from | iPhone and iPad photo libraries | Digital cameras and photo sharing |
What actually differs
Half the size, and that part is real
HEIC lands around 50–60% of the JPEG file for the same picture, because it uses HEVC intra-frame coding instead of a compression design finalised in 1992. On a 128 GB phone holding 20,000 photos, that difference is tens of gigabytes. This is why Apple made the switch and why turning it off has a real cost.
JPEG has no alpha channel, HEIC does
This almost never matters for camera photos, which are opaque rectangles. It matters the moment a HEIC came out of an app rather than a lens — some screenshot and markup tools on iOS produce HEIC with transparency, and converting those to JPEG silently fills the transparent area, usually with black. If the result looks like it grew a dark border, this is why.
You can convert out of HEIC, not into it
HEVC carries patent licensing that keeps it out of most browser and open-source encoders, so browser-based tools — this one included — can decode HEIC but not produce it. Practically this means the direction of travel is one-way: once you convert a library to JPEG for compatibility, going back to HEIC is not something a web tool will do for you.
Which to use
Use HEIC for
Storing photos on Apple devices that stay in the Apple ecosystem, where the space saving is free and everything opens it natively.
Use JPEG for
Anything leaving your device: uploads, email attachments, print shops, client deliverables, or any workflow touching Windows or older software.
One thing that catches people out
"Most Compatible" only changes what you shoot next
Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible switches the camera to JPEG from that moment on. It does not re-encode the photos already in your library. If you came here because of pictures you have already taken, that toggle is not the fix.