What is a HEIC file?

The short answer

HEIC stands for High Efficiency Image Container. It is the file Apple uses for photos taken on iPhone since iOS 11 (2017). Inside the container is an image compressed with HEVC — the same codec family used for 4K video — which is why HEIC files are roughly half the size of an equivalent JPEG.

Why Apple switched

Storage. A 12 MP photo as JPEG is about 3–4 MB; the same photo as HEIC is closer to 1.5 MB. Over a 256 GB phone and thousands of photos, that difference is the reason Apple could keep the base storage low and still let people shoot freely.

HEIC also supports features JPEG cannot: multiple images in one file (Live Photos), depth data, alpha channels, and 10-bit colour.

Why everything else struggles

HEVC decoding requires patent licences. Apple pays for them as part of its hardware; Windows, Android and most desktop software do not include an HEVC decoder by default. The container is also more complex than JPEG — a HEIC file is a small box-structured database, not a single stream of pixels.

When to convert

Convert to JPG when the file needs to leave the Apple ecosystem: uploading to a job portal, sending to a printer, opening in Word or an older version of Photoshop, or attaching to an email that must render in Outlook.

Keep HEIC when you are archiving on Apple devices. Converting to JPG permanently discards data and roughly doubles the size.

What conversion does to metadata

Re-encoding through a canvas drops the EXIF block, including the GPS coordinates iPhone cameras record. That is usually a privacy win, but it also removes the capture date. If date integrity matters, keep the original files.