HEIC to PNG

Convert your HEIC images to PNG, right here in your browser.

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No upload

... or drop files here

Files never leave your device

Add a HEIC image to convert.

Frequently asked questions

What is actually inside a HEIC file?

A .heic file wraps HEVC-compressed image data in a container that can also hold depth maps, bursts and live-photo frames.

Why convert HEIC to PNG?

PNG opens in practically every app, website and device, while HEIC files are often rejected or shown as a blank icon outside the software that created them.

Are my images uploaded to a server?

No. Decoding and re-encoding both happen inside your browser, so your photos never leave your device.

Can I convert several images at once?

Yes. Add as many HEIC files as you like and download the results one by one, or all together as a ZIP archive.

Will the image quality change?

Every image keeps its original pixel dimensions. JPG is a compressed format, so you can choose a quality level before converting; PNG output is lossless.

Is there a file size or file count limit?

No. Everything runs on your own device, so the only practical limit is how much memory your browser has available.

Should I convert my iPhone photos to PNG or JPG?

JPG, for actual photographs — it is what everything expects, and its compression is designed for photographic content. PNG is the right choice for iPhone screenshots, for images heading into an editing workflow where they will be saved repeatedly, and for anything needing transparency. For a holiday photo, PNG gives you a much larger file that looks identical.

Why is my PNG so much bigger than the HEIC?

Because HEIC is small precisely because it is lossy, and PNG discards nothing. Lossless compression works by finding repetition, and photographs have very little — every pixel differs slightly from its neighbour. So you remove the compression that made the file small and add compression that cannot work on that content. Ten times larger is normal.

Is any quality lost?

None in this step. PNG stores exactly what the decoder produced. Whatever compression the iPhone applied when it took the photograph is already baked into the HEIC and is not made worse — which is the whole reason to choose PNG when an image faces further editing.

Why is the conversion slow on my PC?

Because your browser cannot decode HEVC natively — the codec's patent licensing has kept it out of Chrome, Firefox and Edge — so a WebAssembly decoder does the work in software instead. It is a few megabytes, downloaded only when needed, and slower than a hardware decode. On a Mac or an iPhone, Safari uses the system codecs and it is immediate.

Does PNG keep transparency?

Yes, PNG has a full alpha channel, which is one of the reasons to choose it over JPEG. Most photographs have no transparency to keep, but if the image has any it survives.

Are my photos uploaded?

No. Decoding and encoding both happen inside your browser tab, including the WebAssembly decoder, so the images never leave your device.

Most HEIC files are photographs, and most photographs should become JPEGs. This page exists for the cases where that is the wrong answer — and they are specific enough to be worth naming before you start, because converting a photograph to PNG produces a file several times larger for no visible benefit.

PNG is lossless: the pixels that come out are exactly the pixels the decoder produced, with no compression artefacts introduced at any point. That matters in three situations. When the HEIC is a screenshot rather than a photograph, because JPEG puts permanent fringing around text and interface edges. When the image is entering an editing workflow where it will be opened and saved several times, because each JPEG save compounds the loss and PNG does not. And when the image needs an alpha channel, which JPEG does not have at all.

If none of those apply, HEIC to JPG will give you a smaller file that looks the same.

How to convert HEIC to PNG

Add your .heic or .heif files
Drop them in or choose them, as many as you like.
Convert
Each image is decoded — natively on Apple platforms, through a WebAssembly build of libheif everywhere else — and written as PNG. There is no quality setting, because lossless compression has nothing to trade away.
Download
Save the images. Your originals are unchanged and nothing was uploaded.

Why the files get so much bigger

This is the thing people are most often surprised by, so it is worth explaining rather than merely warning about.

Lossless compression works by finding repetition. A screenshot is full of it — large runs of identical pixels in flat interface areas — and compresses down very effectively. A photograph has almost none: every pixel differs slightly from its neighbours because that is what a photograph of the real world looks like, and there is nothing for lossless compression to exploit.

Meanwhile HEIC's small size comes precisely from being lossy, discarding detail the eye will not miss. Converting a lossy photograph to a lossless format therefore removes the compression that made it small while adding no compression that works on that content. A 2 MB HEIC photograph commonly becomes a PNG of 10 MB or more.

None of that is a fault in the conversion. It is what lossless means applied to content that does not suit it, and it is exactly why JPEG remains the right choice for photographs.

When PNG is the right choice

Screenshots taken on an iPhone or iPad: These are HEIC too, and they are full of text and interface edges — precisely what JPEG handles worst. PNG keeps them crisp and, being mostly flat colour, compresses well.
Images entering an editing workflow: Every JPEG save re-compresses and compounds the loss. Working in PNG through the editing and exporting to JPEG once at the end means only one lossy step instead of many.
Anything needing transparency: PNG has an alpha channel; JPEG has none. If the image will be cut out or composited, PNG is the only option of the two.
Archival and reference copies: Where you want a copy guaranteed identical to the decoded source rather than a re-compressed approximation.
Documents photographed for OCR: Text recognition works better on unartefacted images, and JPEG's ringing around letterforms is exactly the kind of noise that degrades it.

The decoding, and why it can be slow

HEIC is decoded natively where the browser can manage it, which in practice means Safari on Apple hardware, where the system's HEVC codecs are available underneath.

Everywhere else — Chrome, Firefox and Edge on Windows, Linux and Android — no HEVC decoder is exposed to the browser, because of the patent licensing that keeps the codec out. So a build of libheif compiled to WebAssembly does the decoding in the page instead. It is a few megabytes and is fetched only when a file actually needs it, and being software rather than hardware it is noticeably slower than a native decode. A large batch on a phone will take a while.

Metadata is not carried through: EXIF, including the GPS coordinates iPhones attach by default, is not written into the PNG. Live Photos convert to their still frame, since a PNG holds one image.

About the HEIC format

.heic is the raster image format MPEG introduced in 2015. It is published as an open specification under the name ISO/IEC 23008-12, so a file can be read without the program that wrote it.

A .heic file wraps HEVC-compressed image data in a container that can also hold depth maps, bursts and live-photo frames.

Files like this usually come out of iPhone, iPad, and macOS Photos.

What comes through

every pixel
pixel dimensions
the colour profile
transparency

What does not

EXIF camera data
layer data

Worth knowing

Most browsers still cannot decode HEIC natively, so this tool falls back to a WebAssembly decoder that is downloaded only when a HEIC file is actually opened.

Information