Ask HN: How are most people converting HEIC to jpg? I use Automator (mac os app) to do this, but it seems like such a dumb thing to do so regularly. If i transfer a photo on my iphone via google drive or some other cloud service, it inevitably needs to be changed to jpg. |
I think converting HEIC into jpg would be simple
vips copy -i src.hif out.jpg
sips -s format jpeg in.heic --out out.jpeg
I’m referring to this:
- select something in Photos, then Share.
- tap “Options” under “1 photo selected” top of sheet.
The first choice there is:
Format:
[√] Automatic
[] Current
[] Most Compatible
Choose Automatic for the best format for the destination or Current to prevent file format conversions. Photos and videos may convert to JPEG, PNG, and H.264 formats if you choose Most Compatible.
Most Compatible will put a jpeg on Drive for example, I just verified myself.
https://caniuse.com/?search=HEIC
I mostly am a DSLR photographer but for the occasional iPhone shot
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/115740936297822037
I use Photoshop. (Where's Cindy when I need her?)
Also I've had no problem with HEIC photos on GPhotos, Dropbox, etc. But YMMV
On the desktop, Preview app (and lots of others) will open and export as ...
On the phone (Apple, sometimes you bewilder me), You can convert in Files, not Photos. 1. Save a photo to FILES from camera roll or web (This works with webp, as well) 2. click and hold the THUMBNAIL, do not open the image. 3. Quick Actions -- Convert image. 4. You can now "save" the image (open, do not click and hold) to your camera roll.
This is BONKERS
As others have noted, "There's an app to do it".
Worst for me in daily life, when you get info on an image (in the camera roll, pull up on the image) WEBP does not even show as a file type. HEIC does.
ios 18, not 26.
[0] https://toolsfairy.com/tools/image-test/sample-heic-files
Conversions on the command line are simple enough with imagemagick. Prior to conversion, I use exiftool to rename the files from IMG_0123.HEIC to the date the image or video was taken, followed by a truncated sha256 digest of the file, e.g. 2025-12-22-1732-f8b7302.HEIC. Otherwise, you can get a nasty condition where the IMG_XXXX filenames collide when consolidated into the same directory.
That said, when I move photos from my phone to by desktop via Signal; somewhere along the way it gets converted to JPEG so it's not a concern.
JPEG is a compression method. Files with JPEG-compressed data are most likely to be in either JFIF or EXIF container formats. Both will almost always use the .jpg/.jpeg file extension.
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
def run(extension)
files = `find . -type f -name "\*.# {extension}"`.split("\n")
files.each do |f|
jpg = f.sub(/\.#{extension}/i, '.jpg')
if !File.exist?(jpg)
cmd = "sips -s format jpeg '#{f}' --out '#{jpg}'"
`#{cmd}`
puts cmd
end
end
end
run("HEIC")
run("heic") magick mogrify -format JPG *.heic *.HEICffmpeg -i input.heic output.jpg
This works on all platforms. You can automate it too. I did for a cloud platform.
Best of luck.
Settings -> Camera -> Formats -> Most Compatible
Settings → Apps -> Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC → Automatic (convert to jpg)
or
In "Shortcuts" app - select photo, convert to jpeg, save file:
heif-dec foo.heic foo.jpgThey basically consume the libheif command line tool so you install that as a prerequisite.
Gwenview also opens them.
> cat ~/.local/share/kio/servicemenus/convertHEIF.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
MimeType=image/heif;
Actions=convertHEIF
[Desktop Action convertHEIF]
Name=Convert to JPEG
Icon=image-bmp
Exec=/bin/sh -c "heif-dec -q 95 %u $(dirname %u)/$(basename %u .heic).jpg"Use it to convert customer images sent from iphones.
libheic on some old debian had troubles parsing recent metadata, PILLOW did not