--- title: How to convert HEIC to JPG on a Mac without uploading anything source: https://arazioformac.com/notes/convert-heic-to-jpg-on-mac --- # How to convert HEIC to JPG on a Mac without uploading anything Your iPhone saves photos as HEIC. Then you try to attach one to a form, upload it to a council website, or send it to someone on Windows, and it is refused. **The one-gesture way** 1. Pick the file up in Finder, as if you were moving it. 2. Hold `⇧`. A ring of formats appears around the cursor. 3. Let go toward **JPG**. The new file lands beside the original. HEIC converts to eight formats — hold ⇧ and they appear around the cursor: AVIF, BMP, GIF, JPG, PDF, PNG, TIFF, WebP. Six actions work on any file at all — hold ⌃, including on files Arazio cannot convert: AirDrop, Shelf, Copy, Move, Copy Path, Terminal. That is the whole thing. It works on one file or four hundred, and nothing is uploaded — the conversion happens on your Mac. [Arazio](https://arazioformac.com) is $9.99 once. The rest of this page is the manual way, for when you would rather not install anything. ## The manual ways, and what each costs you macOS can do this without an app. None of the routes below handle a batch comfortably, and one of them sends your photo to a stranger's server — so they are worth knowing and worth weighing. ### Preview, which is already on your Mac Free, built in, nothing to install. 1. Open the photo in Preview. (Double-click it.) 2. **File → Export…** 3. Change **Format** to **JPEG**. 4. Pick a quality and click **Save**. To do a whole folder: select every photo in Finder, open them all in Preview at once, select all the thumbnails in the sidebar, then **File → Export Selected Images…** **The catch:** Export Selected Images is easy to miss, and the dialog resets its format each time. For one or two photos it is the right answer and you can stop reading. ### Quick Actions, from the right-click menu Also free and built in, and faster than Preview once set up. Right-click a photo → **Quick Actions → Convert Image**. Choose JPEG and a size. It writes a new file beside the original. **The catch:** the quality is chosen for you, and "Convert Image" only offers JPEG, PNG and HEIF. It will not help you with a video or a PDF. ### Stop your iPhone making HEIC in the first place If this keeps happening, change the source. On the iPhone: **Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible.** New photos are JPEG from then on. Or leave the camera alone and change what leaves the phone: **Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC → Automatic** converts on the way out. **The catch:** JPEG files are roughly twice the size for the same picture, and it does nothing about the thousands of HEICs you already have. ### An online converter, and why to think twice Drag the file into a website, wait, download the result. **The catch, and it is a real one:** the photo leaves your computer. It is uploaded to a server you do not control, in a country you did not choose, under a privacy policy you did not read. For a picture of a receipt that is probably fine. For a photo of your passport, a medical document, or anything with a person in it who did not agree to that, it is not. Most of those sites also cap the free tier at a handful of files a day, which is the point at which people start looking for an app. ## Is there anything else to know? **HEIC and HEIF are the same thing** for this purpose. HEIF is the format, HEIC is Apple's name for the file. **Converting does not lose the original.** Every method above writes a new file. Delete the HEIC afterwards if you want to; nothing is overwritten. **JPEG is lossy, and converting again loses a little more.** If you plan to edit the photo, export once at high quality and work from that, rather than converting the same picture back and forth. **Live Photos lose the movement.** A Live Photo is a HEIC plus a short video. Converting gives you the still frame and drops the motion, whichever method you use. ## Why an app, if Preview is free Because Preview is free and slow, and that trade changes with volume. Exporting four photos in Preview takes about a minute once you know where Export Selected Images is hiding. Exporting four hundred takes the same minute in [Arazio](https://arazioformac.com) — pick them up, hold ⇧, let go. Nothing is uploaded: the conversion engines have no networking code in them at all, and a test fails the build if a networking symbol appears there. It is $9.99 once, Apple silicon, and there is no free trial. If you convert a handful of photos a year, Preview is genuinely the right answer. If you are doing this most weeks, the app pays for itself the first afternoon you stop fighting a dialog.