How to Convert HEIC to JPG on a Mac

The fastest way: Finder Quick Actions

macOS has had a built-in image converter since Monterey and almost nobody knows it is there. It handles hundreds of files at once and requires no download.

1. Select the HEIC files in Finder. Command-A selects everything in a folder.
2. Right-click (or Control-click) the selection.
3. Choose Quick Actions, then Convert Image.
4. Set Format to JPEG, choose an image size, and decide whether to keep the metadata.
5. Click Convert to JPEG. The copies appear in the same folder; the originals are untouched.

• "Image Size: Actual Size" keeps the full resolution. Large, Medium and Small resize as well as convert.
• Leaving "Preserve Metadata" ticked keeps the date, camera and GPS coordinates. Untick it before sharing photos publicly.
• This is the right tool for a whole camera-roll export.

Preview, for one file with control

Preview can also do several files at once: select them all in Finder, open them together in Preview, select every thumbnail in the sidebar, then File, Export Selected Images. It is slower than the Quick Action but gives you the quality slider.

1. Open the HEIC in Preview by double-clicking it.
2. Choose File, then Export.
3. Set Format to JPEG.
4. Drag the Quality slider — 90% or above for anything you care about.
5. Choose where to save and click Save.

The browser, when you cannot install or cannot be bothered

Open the HEIC to JPG converter in Safari or Chrome, drop the files in, and download the results. Nothing is installed and nothing is uploaded — the conversion happens in the browser. This is the route to use on a managed work Mac, on someone else's machine, or when you want a specific quality setting without hunting through menus.

An Automator or Shortcuts action, if you do this weekly

If converting HEIC is a recurring chore, build it once. In Shortcuts, create a Quick Action that takes image files, adds a Convert Image step set to JPEG, and saves the result. It then appears in the Finder right-click menu and in the Services menu, and you can assign it a keyboard shortcut.

Automator does the same thing with a Folder Action, which converts anything dropped into a watched folder automatically. That is the version worth building if you regularly import from a phone.

Stop the iPhone sending HEIC to the Mac at all

Most Compatible roughly doubles the storage each photo uses. If you are short of space on the phone, leave the camera on High Efficiency and rely on the Transfer setting instead — you get HEIC on the phone and JPG on the Mac.

1. On the iPhone: Settings, then Photos, scroll to Transfer to Mac or PC, choose Automatic. Photos are converted during transfer.
2. To change what the camera captures in the first place: Settings, then Camera, then Formats, and choose Most Compatible.

Which route to pick