Convert HEIC to WebP
HEIC is the format your iPhone uses to store photos efficiently. WebP is the format the web actually understands. Drop a HEIC file above and get a WebP back, with compression efficiency that comes close to the original HEIC and compatibility that extends to every modern browser.
The HEIC Problem
Since iOS 11 (2017), iPhones capture photos in HEIC by default. It is an excellent format: roughly 50% smaller than JPEG at the same quality, with support for transparency, depth maps, and burst sequences. Apple chose it because it dramatically increases the number of photos that fit on a device.
The problem starts the moment you try to use those photos anywhere outside of Apple’s ecosystem.
Where HEIC does not work
Windows added HEIC support in Windows 10 (via a paid codec extension from the Microsoft Store), but many Windows applications still cannot open HEIC files natively. Chrome OS, most Linux distributions, and Android (before version 9) have no built-in HEIC support. Web browsers cannot display HEIC images at all. Content management systems, email clients, social media upload forms, and web-based design tools almost universally reject HEIC files.
If you have ever right-clicked a photo on your iPhone, chosen “Save Image As” from a web interface, or AirDropped a photo to a non-Apple device and gotten a file that nothing can open, this is why.
Why WebP Is the Best Target for HEIC
When choosing a target format for HEIC photos, you have three realistic options: JPEG, PNG, or WebP. Each involves tradeoffs.
JPEG is universally compatible but uses significantly less efficient compression than HEIC. A 2 MB HEIC photo might become a 5 MB JPEG at quality 90. You are trading file size for compatibility.
PNG preserves every pixel losslessly but produces enormous files for photographs. That same 2 MB HEIC photo could become 15-25 MB as a PNG. This only makes sense if you need lossless quality for editing.
WebP hits the middle ground. Its lossy compression is roughly 25-35% more efficient than JPEG, putting it much closer to HEIC’s compression performance. A 2 MB HEIC photo typically converts to 2.5-3.5 MB WebP at equivalent visual quality. WebP also supports transparency (which JPEG does not) and lossless mode (which JPEG also does not). Browser support is above 97% globally.
The only reason to choose JPEG over WebP is compatibility with systems that do not support WebP, such as legacy email clients, very old CMS platforms, or offline document workflows.
How the HEIC Decoding Works
Browsers cannot decode HEIC natively, so this tool uses a WebAssembly (WASM) decoder compiled from the libheif library. When you drop a HEIC file, the following happens:
- The file is read into memory in your browser
- The WASM decoder parses the HEIC container and decompresses the HEVC-encoded image data
- The raw pixel data (RGBA bitmap) is drawn onto an HTML Canvas element
- The Canvas API encodes the bitmap as WebP using
canvas.toBlob('image/webp', quality) - The resulting WebP file is available for download
No network requests are made during this process. The WASM decoder is downloaded once when you load the page and runs entirely on your CPU.
Performance considerations
HEIC decoding in WASM is slower than native decoding. A 12-megapixel iPhone photo (4032 x 3024 pixels) typically decodes in 1-3 seconds depending on your device. Older phones or tablets may take longer. For batch conversions of many photos, expect each file to take a few seconds.
Privacy and Metadata
Photo conversion tools that run on a server see your images and their embedded metadata: GPS coordinates, timestamps, camera model, and depth data. This tool avoids that entirely. Your HEIC files are decoded and re-encoded in your browser tab. Nothing is sent over the network.
HEIC files from iPhones contain rich EXIF metadata. During canvas-based conversion, most of this metadata is not transferred to the output WebP file. The canvas renders visual pixels but does not propagate EXIF tags. For web publishing, stripping metadata is often desirable anyway, particularly GPS coordinates. If you need to preserve EXIF data, extract it separately with a tool like exiftool before conversion.
For other format conversions (HEIC to JPEG, HEIC to PNG, WebP to PNG, and more), the Image Converter supports all major formats in a single interface. To embed converted images directly in HTML or CSS, the Base64 Encoder generates data URIs from any image file.