PDFs and conversion

How to convert HEIC to JPG on a Mac

Updated 25 October 2026 · 3 min read

iPhone photos arrive as HEIC, which some websites and Windows PCs will not open. Here is how to convert them with Finder's Convert Image, Preview or sips in Terminal, and how Orrel does it from a right-click.

HEIC is the format iPhones use for photos. It keeps quality high and files small, and every Mac opens it. The trouble starts when you upload one to a website, a form or a Windows PC that does not, and you need a JPG instead.

Finder's Convert Image

The quickest way, and it handles a batch:

1. Select one or more HEIC files in Finder.
2. Control-click and choose Quick Actions › Convert Image.
3. Choose JPEG as the format, pick an image size (Small, Medium, Large or Actual Size), and decide whether to keep the metadata.
4. Click Convert to JPEG. The new files appear beside the originals.

Preview, for one image with a quality slider

Open the image in Preview, choose File › Export, set Format to JPEG and drag the Quality slider. The file size updates as you move it, which helps when a form has a size limit. Click Save.

To convert several at once in Preview, open them together, select all the thumbnails in the sidebar, then choose File › Export Selected Images and pick JPEG under Options.

sips in Terminal

macOS includes sips, an image tool that can convert a whole folder in one line:

cd ~/Downloads
for f in *.HEIC; do sips -s format jpeg "$f" --out "${f%.*}.jpg"; done

Change *.HEIC to *.heic if your files have lower-case extensions. Add -s formatOptions 80 before --out to set the JPEG quality.

From Photos

If the photos are in your Photos library, select them and choose File › Export › Export Photos. Set Photo Kind to JPEG and choose the quality and size. This is also the place to untick location information before sharing.

How Orrel does it

Control-click a file in Orrel, drop it on Orrel's Dock icon, or choose Orrel from Finder's Quick Actions, and a ring of choices opens around the file: the other image formats, PDF, Compress and Resize. Use the arrow keys or the number keys and press Return. The new file appears beside the original, which is never changed.

• Batches. Select many files and convert them in one go.
• Remove metadata. Strip camera details and GPS location before posting a photo of your flat.
• Images to PDF. Combine photos of documents into one PDF.
• The rest. The same ring converts video, audio, PDF pages and Markdown or Word files to PDF.

Where Orrel stops

Orrel converts between the formats macOS can read and write: JPEG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF, GIF and BMP, plus WebP where your version of macOS can write it. It does not write AVIF, and it is not a photo editor; for colour or exposure changes, use Photos or Preview's Adjust Color. Finder's Convert Image does the HEIC-to-JPG job perfectly well on its own, so Orrel earns its place when you are converting all sorts of files, not just photos.