Command line and power tools

HEIC to JPG without extra software

Updated 2026-08-08 · 4 min read

iPhones shoot HEIC, half the world's upload forms still want JPG, and the conversion is built into the Mac at three different depths. No website, no app store, no watermark.

One file, or a folder: Finder

Select HEIC files, right-click, Quick Actions → Convert Image, choose JPEG and a size. Originals stay; converted copies appear alongside. This handles a selection of hundreds without complaint and is the answer for most people.

The terminal, for control

sips ships with macOS:

sips -s format jpeg photo.heic --out photo.jpg

A folder at a time:

mkdir jpg && for f in *.heic; do sips -s format jpeg "$f" --out "jpg/${f%.heic}.jpg"; done

Add -s formatOptions 85 for 85% JPEG quality, which halves the size again over the default with no visible cost for photos headed to the web.

Stopping the problem at the source

To make the iPhone shoot JPEG in the first place: Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible. To keep HEIC on the phone but convert during transfer: Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC → Automatic. HEIC at half the size of JPEG is genuinely better for the archive, so converting on demand — not at the source — is the storage-friendly default.

Finding every HEIC you have

AirDropped photos land in Downloads, exports in project folders, and the archive question is eventually "which of my image files are HEIC". By extension:

mdfind 'kMDItemFSName == "*.heic"' | wc -l

Any search tool that filters by extension answers it per-drive; the count is usually higher than expected, because every AirDrop since 2017 contributed.

Common questions

Does converting HEIC to JPG lose quality?

Slightly — JPEG re-encodes the image. At quality 85 or above the difference is invisible for normal photos. Keep the HEIC as the master.

Why do my iPhone photos arrive as HEIC on the Mac?

The phone shoots HEIC by default and AirDrop transfers the original file. Change the camera format or transfer setting to get JPEG.