a folder of heic, and something that wants jpg

convert heic to jpg in the Finder, in batches

1. select the pictures in Finder — one, or all four hundred.
2. right-click → Quick Actions → Convert Image.
3. pick JPEG as the format, choose a size, and press Convert.
4. the copies appear next to the originals, which are left alone.

that is the whole thing. it is part of macOS, it runs on the whole selection at once, and it is the answer the online converters are hoping you never find.

Apple documents it in one line inside the Finder help, which is a fair part of why so few people know it exists: convert an image to another format on Mac

and if the question underneath is why your phone writes this format at all, that one has a better answer than «Apple being awkward»: why your photos are heic

does it reduce the image quality?

it can, and not in the way you would expect: the choice is not a quality percentage but a size. «Small», «Medium» and «Large» resize the picture — roughly 320, 640 and 1280 pixels across — and only «Actual size» keeps the pixels you had. how hard the jpeg itself is squeezed is decided for you either way.

the same dialog has a Preserve Metadata tick. leave it off and the copies lose the exif, which means the date the photo was taken goes with it — worth checking before you convert four hundred holiday pictures.

converting heic to jpg in Terminal

there is a third built-in route that almost nobody mentions, and it is the most capable of the three: sips, a command that ships with macOS. it takes a real quality number, and it works on a whole folder in one line.

1. sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 80 photo.heic --out photo.jpg — one file, quality 80.
2. for a folder: sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 80 *.heic --out ./jpgs — with the destination folder made first.
3. sips --formats lists everything the system can read and write, which is the fastest way to settle an argument about what macOS supports.

the numbers are not cosmetic. the same source at quality 60 and at quality 90 came out at 1.6 mb and 5.9 mb — so the claim you will read everywhere, that macOS gives you no control over jpeg quality, is only true of the right-click menu.

sips is not the only capable command hiding in macOS without a window — the built-in speed test is the same story: the speed test already on your Mac

Preview covers the middle ground: open the pictures, select them all in the sidebar, File → Export Selected Images, and the Options button reveals the format and a quality slider. useful when you already have them open and want to see the picture while you decide.

where the built-in heic converters stop

three walls, and which one you hit depends on what the pictures are for.

webp: the one format macOS will not write

this is the real gap, and it is narrower and sharper than the internet says. avif your Mac writes perfectly well — sips lists it as writable, so a web project can be served modern images with nothing installed. webp it reads and does not write, from any built-in tool, at any version. if the site you are feeding wants webp, no amount of Finder or Terminal gets you there.

you find out the size after, not before

every route above tells you the result by producing it. the right-click menu offers three words instead of a size; Preview shows a slider and the number after you save; sips takes a quality and reports nothing. «get this folder under 2 mb a picture» is therefore a loop: convert, look, adjust, convert again.

for one photograph that is fine. for a batch it is the whole job, because you are guessing on behalf of four hundred files at once.

why are the jpegs bigger than the heic files?

because heic is genuinely better at compression: the same picture at the same visual quality is roughly half the size. converting to jpeg trades that away for a format everything can open, and the copies growing is the expected outcome rather than a mistake.

the same «make it smaller without ruining it» question on a document has a different answer, and Preview's own one is worse than people think: compress a pdf on Mac

how hop converts heic to jpg

drag the pictures into hop's converter window and it tells you how much smaller — or bigger — every file is going to get before you convert anything. the estimate is not arithmetic on a rule of thumb: hop honestly converts a sample first and reports what actually came out.

that is the difference this page comes down to, and it is the loop above closed. with any built-in route you convert and then find out; here you find out and then convert.

what it adds over sips and the right-click menu

• out: jpeg, png, heic, avif and webp — webp being the one no built-in tool will write.
• the squeeze has a level you set, so «make this fit in an email» is a setting rather than four attempts.
• the whole batch at once, and the originals are untouched: results land next to them as copies.
• one window for images, pdfs, video and audio, instead of a Quick Action for one thing and a Terminal command for another.
• everything happens on your Mac. a folder of photographs never goes to somebody's server to be converted and, in principle, kept.

what it does not do is beat sips at quality control. if you are comfortable in the Terminal and know the number you want, that command is free, already installed, and completely sufficient.

the same window handles the video side of this, where the built-in answer is stranger still: convert mov to mp4

the module in full — formats, size estimates and what it does with documents: file converter on the features page

when the jpegs are not what you expected

the dates are wrong on the copies

two different dates get confused here. the file's creation date is the moment of conversion and will always look wrong. the date the photo was taken lives in the exif — and it survives only if Preserve Metadata was ticked, which is the tick most people never notice.

why are my screenshots heic?

the format of new screenshots is a setting of its own: ⇧⌘5 → Options → Format. on recent macOS it is not always png, so converting them afterwards is treating a symptom — change it there and the next one arrives in the format you wanted.

a live photo turned into a still

• jpeg has no video track; the motion is not lost from the original, it simply cannot travel into a jpeg.
• webp and avif came out unexpected — check which route you used: the Finder menu offers three formats, sips offers everything the system can write, and they are not the same list.
• you actually needed one picture, once. use Quick Actions. an app is worth installing for the folder of four hundred, not for the one.
• the pictures are still heic on your iPhone and this keeps happening. Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible writes jpeg from the start, at about twice the storage.

and if the folder of originals is what filled the disk in the first place: what the space a cleaner finds is made of

frequently asked questions

why are my photos heic in the first place?

the iPhone camera writes heic because it is roughly half the size of jpeg at the same quality. you can switch it in Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible, which trades that space back for a format nothing questions.

how do i convert hundreds at once for free?

select them all in Finder and use Quick Actions → Convert Image — it takes the whole selection in one pass. for numeric quality control on a folder, sips in Terminal does the same job with a real quality setting.

how do i convert heic to jpg in Terminal?

sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 80 photo.heic --out photo.jpg. the number is jpeg quality: at 60 and 90 the same source came out at 1.6 mb and 5.9 mb, so it is worth choosing deliberately.

does converting heic to jpg lose quality?

yes, a little: jpeg is lossy and the picture is re-encoded. at normal settings you will not see it once, but converting the same picture back and forth repeatedly compounds. keep the heic originals and treat the jpegs as copies for sending.

does converting remove the exif data?

in the Finder's Quick Action it depends on the Preserve Metadata tick in the dialog. left off, the copies lose the exif — and with it the date the photo was taken.

can macOS write webp or avif?

avif yes, webp no. sips lists avif as writable and webp as read-only, and the Finder's Quick Action offers neither — it writes JPEG, PNG and HEIF only.

can i convert without uploading my photos anywhere?

yes — every method on this page runs on your Mac. online converters are the only option here that involves sending your pictures to a stranger, and they are usually the ones ranking for it.

the tool behind this

done with convert and compress

other things people do

• mov and mp4 are often the same filefile converter
• QuickTime will not open it. the video is fine.file converter
• the pdf is 40 mb and the form accepts 10file converter