HEIC to PNG Converter

How this HEIC to PNG converter works

HEIC is the format iPhones and recent iPads use by default, and almost nothing outside the Apple ecosystem opens it. This HEIC to PNG converter fixes that without uploading your photos. The first time you drop a HEIC file, the page loads a small decoder (libheif compiled to WebAssembly, about 1 MB) into your browser. That decoder turns the HEIC into raw pixels, the pixels are drawn onto a canvas, and the canvas is saved as a PNG. Every step runs on your own device. You will see a "Loading the HEIC decoder" message once; after that, conversions are fast.

Rotation metadata is respected, so portrait shots come out upright. Live Photos and burst files are converted as their main still image. Files with the .heif and .hif extensions use the same container and are accepted too.

Why PNG rather than JPG?

PNG is lossless. Whatever detail the HEIC holds, the PNG keeps all of it, which makes it the right choice when you are going to edit the photo, print it, or submit it somewhere that rejects JPG. The cost is size: a 12-megapixel iPhone photo is around 2 MB as HEIC and becomes 20 to 30 MB as PNG, because PNG cannot discard anything. If you just want to share the photo or attach it to an email, the HEIC to JPG converter gives you a file about the same size as the original.

One thing no converter can give you back is HEIC's extra color depth. HEIC stores 10 bits per channel on newer iPhones; PNG from a browser canvas is 8 bits per channel, which is what every screen shows anyway. For everyday use you will not notice, but if you are a photographer after the widest editing latitude, export from the Photos app instead.

A worked example

Take IMG_4231.HEIC from an iPhone 15: 4032 × 3024 pixels, 1.9 MB. Dropped here, the decoder loads in about two seconds on a typical connection, the file decodes in under a second, and the output IMG_4231.png is about 22 MB. That looks alarming next to the 1.9 MB input, but it is the honest size of 12 million uncompressed-quality pixels. Convert ten photos and the "Download all" button saves them one after another.

Privacy and limits

Phone photos carry location data and, obviously, pictures of your life. Uploading them to a converter site means trusting a stranger's server and retention policy. Here the files never leave the tab: once the page and the decoder are loaded, you can switch off Wi-Fi and the conversion still works. Note that the canvas re-encode drops the EXIF block (location, camera settings) from the PNG, which is usually what you want when sharing.

Files over 50 MB are allowed but may fail on phones with limited memory. If a file is rejected as "not a HEIC", it was probably renamed from a JPG; try the JPG to PNG converter. And if you want to stop this problem at the source, set iPhone Settings → Camera → Formats to "Most Compatible" to shoot JPG directly.