Convert HEIC to PNG
Your files stay on this device. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is stored on a server.
Drop your files here
or pick them from your device
How it works
- Drop your .heic or .heif photos onto the bench, or pick them from your device.
- Press Convert. Decoding happens on this page, in your browser.
- Download the PNGs one by one, or all of them as a single .zip.
Most people converting HEIC want JPG, because JPG is small and opens everywhere. Choosing PNG instead is a deliberate decision, and it is usually the right one in exactly two situations: when the picture is going to be edited, and when it is a screenshot rather than a photograph.
The editing case comes down to how the two formats treat detail. JPG discards a little every time a file is saved, so a photo that goes through three rounds of cropping, colour correction and re-saving picks up three rounds of damage. PNG is lossless — open it, change it, save it a hundred times and every pixel is still exactly what the decoder produced from the HEIC. If the photo is a starting point rather than a finished product, decode it once to PNG and do the work there.
The screenshot case is about what HEIC is holding. iPhones save screenshots as PNG by default, but screen recordings, some apps and some sharing paths hand you HEIC files of interface captures. Those are full of flat colour and crisp text, which JPG smudges and PNG stores perfectly and often compactly.
For an ordinary photograph, PNG is the wrong choice unless one of the above applies. The file will be very large — a 2 MB HEIC routinely becomes a 15 to 25 MB PNG — and nothing about the image is improved by the extra size. HEIC can hold 10-bit colour and PNG from this converter is 8-bit, so a photo with very smooth gradients may pick up faint banding; the same happens with JPG. Live Photos and bursts contribute their still frame only.
Questions people ask
- When should I pick PNG instead of JPG?
- When the image will be edited further, or when it is a screenshot or graphic rather than a photograph. For a photo that is simply going to be viewed or sent, JPG is far smaller and looks the same.
- Why is the PNG so enormous?
- PNG stores every pixel without discarding anything, and photographs have almost no repeating patterns for it to compress. Ten times the size of the HEIC is normal. That is the price of a file that never degrades.
- Does PNG keep the full quality of the HEIC?
- It keeps every pixel the decoder produces, with no further loss. The one caveat is colour depth: this converter writes 8-bit PNG, so a 10-bit HEIC with very smooth gradients can show slight banding.
- Can I convert a whole batch at once?
- Yes. Drop as many HEIC files as you like; each is decoded in turn so memory stays under control, and when they are done you can download them individually or all together as one .zip.
- What about Live Photos?
- You get the still image, which is what the camera roll shows. The short video part is a separate file on the phone and is not inside the HEIC.
- Is anything uploaded?
- No. Your browser decodes the HEIC and writes the PNG on this page. On browsers without a native HEIC decoder, a decoder is downloaded to your browser and runs there — the photo itself is never sent anywhere.