Turn iPhone photos into files that open anywhere

This problem appears the moment an iPhone photograph has to go anywhere that is not another Apple device. HEIC is a genuinely better format than JPEG, roughly half the size for the same quality, and Apple made it the default some years ago. The rest of the world did not follow at the same pace, so Windows, older software and a good number of upload forms simply refuse the file.

The result is a specific and very common frustration: a photograph that looks fine on the phone, will not attach to the insurance claim, will not open on the work laptop, and produces an unhelpful error rather than an explanation. It is not a fault with the photograph.

Converting to JPEG solves it at the cost of file size, and that trade is usually worth making for something being sent once. If it is a photo library rather than a handful of images, keeping the originals in HEIC and converting only what needs to travel is the better arrangement, since converting everything roughly doubles the storage for no benefit.

One thing worth knowing is that the conversion is lossy in one direction. HEIC files can hold things JPEG cannot, including depth information and, for Live Photos, the motion. Converting keeps the still image and drops the rest, which is normally exactly what you want and is occasionally a surprise.

There is a simpler fix worth mentioning, because it prevents the problem rather than solving it: on the iPhone, under Camera settings, Formats, choosing Most Compatible makes the camera produce JPEGs directly. Worth doing on a phone mainly used for photographing documents and receipts, and worth not doing on one used for actual photography, where the quality per byte is better kept.

The conversion runs in your browser. Phone photographs are among the most personal files anyone handles, and they carry location and timing metadata as well as the picture, so none of it needs to be sent to a stranger's server to change a file extension.