How to Convert HEIC to JPG on Mac (One Photo or a Whole Folder)

To convert HEIC to JPG on a Mac without installing anything, select the photos in Finder, right-click, choose Quick Actions → Convert Image, and set Format to JPEG. For one photo, open it in Preview and use File → Export with Format set to JPEG. Both are free, built into macOS, and run entirely on your Mac with nothing uploaded.

Those two cover most cases. The rest of this guide covers the cases they don’t: photos still inside the Photos library, folders of several hundred, JPGs that must lose their GPS location before they go anywhere, and JPGs that come out looking slightly wrong.

In this guide11 sections

Which method fits your photos

Why HEIC files bounce

HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) is the format your iPhone has saved photos in since iOS 11. It’s a good format: the same photo at roughly half the size of a JPG. The trouble is that plenty of software still can’t read it. Older Windows apps, web upload forms, print kiosks, HR and legal portals, and a lot of photo-book services expect a plain JPG, and they either reject a .heic file or show a blank thumbnail.

Before you reach for a free web converter: an iPhone photo carries EXIF metadata, including the GPS coordinates of where it was taken, the exact time, and the device model. Uploading it hands all of that to a server you don’t control. Every method below runs on your Mac, which matters more for personal photos than for almost any other kind of file.

Method 1: Finder’s Convert Image Quick Action (fastest free batch)

Since macOS Monterey, Finder has a built-in image converter in the right-click menu. Many people never find it.

1. In Finder, select every HEIC file you want to convert (⌘-click, or ⌘A for a whole folder).
2. Right-click the selection and choose Quick Actions → Convert Image.
3. Set Format to JPEG, and Image Size to Actual Size to keep full resolution (Small, Medium or Large shrink the copies).
4. Decide on Preserve Metadata. Untick it and the GPS location and device details stay behind.
5. Click Convert to JPEG.

The JPG copies land in the same folder as the originals, which stay untouched. For most people with a batch to do once, this is the answer.

Its limits: there’s no JPEG quality setting, no control over filenames, and no way to send the results to a different folder.

Method 2: Preview (one photo, with a quality slider)

Preview is the right tool when you have one or two photos and care about the file size.

1. Open the HEIC file in Preview.
2. Choose File → Export.
3. Set Format to JPEG.
4. Drag the Quality slider. Around 80–90% gives a much smaller file you can’t tell apart from the original.
5. Click Save.

Preview can do several at once: open the photos together, select all the thumbnails in the sidebar (⌘A), then choose File → Export Selected Images. That’s fine up to a couple of dozen photos; past that, the sidebar becomes awkward and you can’t name the outputs.

Method 3: The Photos app (if the pictures never left your library)

If your iPhone photos sync to the Photos app through iCloud, there may be no HEIC file in Finder to convert at all. Export straight from the library instead:

1. In Photos, select the pictures.
2. Choose File → Export → Export [number] Photos.
3. Set Photo Kind to JPEG, then pick a JPEG quality and a size (Full Size keeps every pixel).
4. Under the include options, untick Location Information if the copies are going anywhere public.
5. Click Export and choose a folder.

This route applies any edits you made in Photos, such as crops and adjustments. Avoid Export Unmodified Original for this job: it hands you the original HEIC again, and a Live Photo comes out as two files, a still image and a short video.

Method 4: sips in Terminal (scripted batches)

sips (Scriptable Image Processing System) ships with macOS and suits anyone comfortable in Terminal, or anyone converting the same folder structure over and over.

Convert one file:

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

Convert a whole folder into a separate jpg subfolder, so the originals are never in the line of fire:

cd ~/Pictures/iphone-export
mkdir -p jpg
for f in *.heic *.HEIC; do
  [ -e "$f" ] || continue
  sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 85 "$f" --out "jpg/${f%.*}.jpg"
done

formatOptions sets JPEG quality from 0 to 100; 80–90 is the usual range.

sips is fast and free, but unforgiving. It shows no preview, a wrong --out path can overwrite files, and the location data travels with the JPGs unless you strip it with another tool. It’s a good fit for a scripted pipeline and more than you need for a one-off. If a pipeline is where you’re heading, Zumkor’s “Convert Files” and “Resize Pictures” actions in Apple’s Shortcuts app run whole batches without a Terminal loop.

Method 5: Zumkor (folders of hundreds, renamed and cleaned)

The built-in tools become a chore once converting photos is a regular job: a photographer handing shoots to clients on Windows, a parent sending school photos, an agent uploading listings to a portal that only takes JPG. That’s the job Zumkor is built for. It needs macOS 14 or later on an Apple silicon Mac (M1 or newer).

1. Drag in your HEIC files or a whole folder (up to 2,000 files in one list), or pull pictures straight from your Photos library without exporting them first.
2. Choose “JPG for sharing”. It turns HEIC into JPG, and it works on any photo, so a folder mixing HEIC, PNG and WebP comes out as one set of JPGs. Apply to All at the top of the menu sets the whole list at once.
3. Check the rows. Each one shows the exact filename it will produce, and warns you when a photo is going to keep its personal information, meaning where it was taken and what took it. For photos headed somewhere public, pick “Privacy export” to remove it.
4. Click Convert.

Everything runs on your Mac with nothing uploaded, and converting works with Wi-Fi off. The JPGs go to a folder you choose (Zumkor remembers it), the originals stay where they were, and you can close the window while a big batch finishes. If the photos need to be smaller as well, choose “Email-friendly” (1600 px) or “Web small” (1280 px) instead, so you describe the size in words rather than pixels. For client delivery, filename templates add the date, a client name and numbering, and keep the names safe for Windows.

On price: everything is free for 7 days, and after that you can keep converting 5 files a day (25 a week) for free. Photos are never watermarked. The Full Version is a one-time $19.99 purchase, buy once and keep it forever, shared with your family through Family Sharing. The same drag works for camera RAW, TIFF scans, AVIF, WebP and PNG to JPG, and when an upload portal insists on PNG, HEIC to PNG too.

The honest trade-off: for one photo, once, Preview is already on your Mac and costs nothing. Zumkor earns its place when one photo turns into a folder of 240, when the names matter, or when you also convert video and audio and don’t want a separate tool for each.

Getting the JPG right

A few details decide whether you end up with the JPG you actually wanted:

• Quality vs. size. JPG is lossy. Exporting at 100% gives a needlessly large file; 80–90% looks identical for photos and is far smaller. Below about 60%, blocky artifacts show up in skies and gradients. Zumkor has no quality slider: its presets choose the setting for the destination.
• Resolution. For email or the web, about 2,000 px on the long edge looks sharp on any screen and cuts the file size sharply. Keep full resolution only for printing or archiving.
• Metadata. Make the call on purpose. Keep EXIF if you want the capture date to survive; strip it if the photo is going anywhere public. Here’s the full guide to removing EXIF data on a Mac. Videos you send can carry location data too.
• Color. iPhone photos are usually in the wide-gamut Display P3 color space. Zumkor writes the source’s color profile into the JPG, so browsers, Photos and other color-managed apps show the colors as shot. An old, non-color-managed Windows viewer can show P3 files slightly oversaturated; if that’s your target, convert the finished JPG to sRGB with sips --matchTo "/System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/sRGB Profile.icc" photo.jpg --out photo-srgb.jpg.
• Live Photos. A Live Photo is a still HEIC plus a short video. Converting the HEIC gives you the still as a JPG; the moving part is a separate .MOV, and turning that into something shareable is a video job, like converting MOV to MP4.
• Dates. A converted file is a new file, so Finder shows today’s creation date. The capture date lives on in the EXIF data, unless you strip it, and that’s what Photos and most galleries sort by.

Stop the HEIC flood at the source

If you convert the same phone’s photos every week, change the phone instead of the workflow. On the iPhone, go to Settings → Camera → Formats and choose Most Compatible.

From then on the camera saves JPG (and records video as H.264 rather than HEVC), so nothing needs converting. The cost is storage: a JPG runs about twice the size of the same photo as HEIC, on the phone and in iCloud. Make the switch if your photos regularly leave Apple devices, and stay on High Efficiency if conversions are rare.

Two other settings soften the problem without changing the capture format. Under Settings → Apps → Photos, set Transfer to Mac or PC to Automatic: the phone converts HEIC to JPG on the fly when you import over USB, so the phone keeps small HEICs and the computer gets JPGs. And iOS usually converts photos to JPG when you share them by Mail, which is why emailed photos tend to arrive fine while the same photos copied to a Windows-bound USB stick don’t.

If the photos are already on your Mac, use any method above.

Bottom line

• One or two photos: Preview → File → Export → JPEG.
• A folder, free: Finder → right-click → Quick Actions → Convert Image. The best built-in batch, and it can drop GPS data.
• Photos still in your library: Photos → File → Export, Photo Kind JPEG, Location Information unticked.
• Hundreds, scripted: a sips loop into a separate folder.
• A batch you repeat, with renaming, privacy cleanup or other formats in the mix: Zumkor. Drag the folder in, choose “JPG for sharing”, fully offline. Everything is free for 7 days, then 5 files a day stay free.

The one option to skip is a random web converter. Your photos carry your location and your device details, and your Mac can do the whole job locally.

Next up: if the file that won’t open is a video rather than a photo, see how to convert MKV to MP4 on Mac.

FAQ

How do I convert HEIC to JPG on a Mac without installing anything?

Select the HEIC files in Finder, right-click, and choose Quick Actions → Convert Image, then set Format to JPEG. macOS writes JPG copies next to the originals, and unticking Preserve Metadata drops the GPS location on the way out. For a single photo, Preview’s File → Export with Format set to JPEG does the same job with a quality slider.

Does converting HEIC to JPG lose quality?

Technically yes. Both formats are lossy, so re-encoding discards a little data, but at 80–90% JPG quality the difference is invisible for photos. The JPG will be roughly twice the file size of the HEIC. Convert once and keep the result: repeated round-trips (HEIC → JPG → edit → JPG) stack compression artifacts, so go back to the original HEIC if you need a fresh copy.

How do I convert hundreds of HEIC photos to JPG at once?

Finder’s Convert Image Quick Action handles a large selection in one go, and a sips loop in Terminal converts a whole folder from a script. To convert, rename and clean location data in one pass, drag the folder into Zumkor: it queues up to 2,000 files, shows each output filename before you convert, and writes the JPGs to a folder you choose, all offline.

How do I stop my iPhone from taking HEIC photos in the first place?

Set Settings → Camera → Formats to “Most Compatible” and the camera saves JPG from then on, at roughly double the storage per photo. Or keep shooting HEIC and set Settings → Apps → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC to Automatic, which converts to JPG during USB import while the smaller HEIC originals stay on the phone.