How to Turn Off HEIC on iPhone and Shoot in JPG Instead

If you’ve gotten tired of your iPhone photos refusing to open on a Windows PC, upload to a website, or attach to an email, you can stop the problem at the source — by telling your iPhone to shoot JPG instead of HEIC. It takes about ten seconds. Here’s exactly how, plus how to deal with the HEIC photos already sitting in your camera roll.

How to turn off HEIC on iPhone

The setting lives in your camera options:

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down and tap Camera.
3. Tap Formats at the top.
4. Select Most Compatible.

That’s it. Most Compatible tells your iPhone to save photos as JPG (and videos as H.264) instead of the High Efficiency HEIC/HEVC formats. Every photo you take from this point forward will be a standard .jpg file that opens on virtually any device on Earth.

If you ever want HEIC back — to save storage — return to the same screen and choose High Efficiency.

What this setting does and doesn’t do

It’s important to understand the limits of this switch:

• It only affects new photos. Every HEIC photo already in your library stays HEIC. The setting is not retroactive.
• It applies to the camera, not to imports. Photos you save from messages or download can arrive in any format regardless of this setting.
• Live Photos still work in Most Compatible mode.

So flipping this switch stops new HEIC files from appearing, but it does nothing about the hundreds you may already have. We’ll handle those below.

The trade-off you’re accepting

Switching to JPG isn’t free — you’re trading efficiency for compatibility:

• Bigger files. JPGs are roughly twice the size of the equivalent HEIC. If storage is tight, your photos will fill it faster.
• Less image data. JPEG is limited to 8-bit color and can’t store HDR or wide-gamut data the way HEIC can. For everyday snapshots you won’t notice; for dramatic skies and high-contrast scenes, HEIC technically captures more.

For a deeper look at why Apple chose HEIC and what you give up by leaving it, read why iPhone uses HEIC format.

For many people, the convenience of never thinking about file formats again is well worth a bit more storage use. For others — especially those with plenty of iCloud space — the smarter move is to leave HEIC on and convert only when needed.

Converting the HEIC photos you already have

Whichever path you choose, you’ll still have a pile of existing HEIC files. The cleanest way to convert them is in your browser, with no upload and no software install.

Our HEIC to JPG converter turns your existing .heic photos into standard JPGs entirely on your device — your photos never get sent to a server. You can drop in a whole batch at once and download them as a ZIP. If you need a pixel-perfect, lossless result instead, the HEIC to PNG converter preserves every pixel exactly.

This is why a lot of people land on a hybrid approach: keep the iPhone in High Efficiency to save space, and convert the handful of photos you actually need to share. You get the storage savings of HEIC and the compatibility of JPG, without committing fully to either.

Should you turn HEIC off at all?

Here’s a simple way to decide:

• Turn it off if you frequently share photos with Windows or Android users, upload to picky websites, or just never want to deal with HEIC again — and you’re not worried about storage.
• Leave it on if you want to save storage, mostly stay within the Apple ecosystem, and don’t mind converting the occasional photo before sharing.

There’s no wrong answer — it’s about which annoyance you’d rather avoid: bigger files, or the occasional conversion.

The bottom line

Turning off HEIC on your iPhone is a two-tap change in Settings > Camera > Formats > Most Compatible. It stops new HEIC files immediately but won’t convert the ones you already have — for those, our HEIC to JPG converter does the job privately and for free in your browser. Decide based on whether storage savings or universal compatibility matters more to you.