HEIC to PNG

Convert iPhone HEIC photos to PNG.

Processed on your device. We never see your files.

How to use HEIC to PNG

What is HEIC?

HEIC — High Efficiency Image Container — is the still-image format Apple adopted as the iPhone and iPad default in iOS 11 (2017). The file is a HEIF container holding image data compressed with the H.265 / HEVC codec, the same codec used for 4K video streaming. HEIC stores roughly the same visual quality as JPG at half the file size, and the container can hold extras that JPG cannot: Portrait-mode depth maps, Live Photo motion fragments, image bursts, 10-bit colour for HDR captures, and an alpha channel for transparency. The format is fully supported on Apple devices but remains a niche outside them, which is why exporting to a more portable format is one of the most common things iPhone users ask of their photos.

What is PNG?

PNG, Portable Network Graphics, is the web’s universal lossless raster format. Designed in the mid-1990s as a patent-free replacement for GIF, it stores every pixel exactly as captured, supports a full 8-bit alpha channel for transparency, and uses deflate-based compression that favours flat colour, screenshots and line art. PNG has been supported by every operating system, browser, document editor, photo viewer, CMS and print workflow for nearly thirty years. When you need to move an image out of HEIC without losing a single pixel of detail, PNG is the safe target — slower to encode than JPG and substantially larger on disk, but lossless and accepted everywhere.

Why convert HEIC to PNG?

Preserving exact pixels is the strongest case for PNG over JPG. If the photo will be edited, annotated, masked, colour-corrected or composited later, every save through a lossy format loses a little more detail. PNG preserves the decoded HEIC pixels exactly — re-saves in any tool will keep that fidelity intact through the rest of your workflow.

Transparency is the second case. HEIC supports an alpha channel, and HEIC files exported from photo-editing apps on iOS may carry transparent backgrounds. PNG keeps that alpha intact, while JPG would have to composite it against a solid colour. This matters for graphic-design assets, product cut-outs, logos and screenshots with transparent overlays.

Compatibility outside Apple devices is the universal case. Windows, older Android phones, Linux desktops, Microsoft Word, many CMS plugins, e-commerce platforms and most printing services either reject HEIC outright or render it incorrectly. PNG sails through all of them without any extension installs or codec downloads.

How to use this HEIC to PNG converter

Drop your HEIC file onto the dropzone, or click to browse. AirDrop the photo from your iPhone first if it isn’t already on your computer.
There is no quality slider — PNG is lossless, so it captures the decoded HEIC pixels exactly. The output’s file size is determined only by the image’s resolution and content.
Click Convert to PNG. The first conversion downloads the HEIC decoder library (about 3 MB); after that, every conversion on the page is instant.
Check the converted preview. Expect the PNG to be much larger than the HEIC — typically five to seven times the size — because PNG stores every pixel losslessly.
Click Download PNG to save it. The original filename is preserved with the extension swapped to .png.

Quality tips for HEIC to PNG

The PNG captures whatever the HEIC contains, so the rule is “start from the highest-quality HEIC source available”. An iPhone original from the Photos app is fine. A HEIC saved out of a chat app or re-encoded by a third-party utility may already have lost detail, and the PNG will faithfully preserve those compression artefacts at five times the file size. For the best result, work from the Photos library’s original.

If your iPhone is set to capture in 10-bit HDR, the PNG will be tone- mapped down to standard 8-bit sRGB. That’s the same image every non-Apple device shows anyway. If you specifically need to keep HDR data, neither PNG nor a canvas-based tool is the right path — export from Photos directly with the HDR option enabled.

Privacy

Your HEIC stays on your device. The decoder is a local JavaScript library; the canvas redraw is local; the PNG encode is local; the download is served by your own browser. No file content, no EXIF metadata, no GPS coordinates and no usage data leaves the page. This is especially worth flagging for HEIC because iPhone photos almost always carry location data by default, which most users do not want to share with random web tools.

Browser compatibility

This converter works in every modern browser — Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari and their mobile equivalents. HEIC decoding is provided by the heic2any JavaScript library, which is lazy-loaded the first time you convert a file (about 3 MB download). The download happens once per browser session; later conversions on the page are instant. PNG encoding via canvas has been supported universally since canvas existed.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my iPhone save photos as HEIC?

Since iOS 11 (2017) Apple has used HEIC as the default capture format because it stores photos at roughly half the file size of JPG at the same quality, leaving more room on the device and in iCloud. HEIC's HEIF container also holds extras that older formats cannot — Live Photo motion, Portrait-mode depth maps, image bursts and 10-bit colour. The trade-off is that almost nothing outside the Apple ecosystem reads HEIC natively, which is why this kind of converter exists.

Why does my Windows PC not open HEIC files?

Windows 10 and 11 don't ship a HEIC decoder by default. Microsoft offers the HEIF Image Extensions for free in the Microsoft Store, and a separate paid HEVC Video Extensions package, but most users never install them. The result is that Windows shows the file as unsupported. PNG, on the other hand, has been supported by every Windows app since the 1990s, so converting once resolves the issue everywhere.

Will I lose quality converting HEIC to PNG?

No — PNG is lossless. The HEIC is decoded to a pixel buffer, and the PNG encoder stores every pixel value exactly as decoded. There is no second round of lossy compression on top of what HEIC already did. The only caveat is that PNG cannot represent the 10-bit HDR colour that some recent iPhones capture; those photos are tone-mapped down to standard 8-bit sRGB during the decode, which matches what every non-Apple viewer would show anyway.

Why is the PNG so much bigger than my HEIC?

HEIC uses the H.265 / HEVC video codec for compression, which is one of the most efficient image codecs ever shipped. PNG is lossless and stores every pixel value with no quality reduction. A 2 MB HEIC photo will typically become a 10-15 MB PNG — five to seven times larger. That's the cost of moving from a state-of-the-art lossy codec to a lossless format. If you don't need lossless, HEIC to JPG produces a much smaller file.

Is my HEIC photo uploaded anywhere?

No. The HEIC is decoded inside your browser by the heic2any JavaScript library, the canvas redraw runs locally, and the PNG encode runs locally. No file content and no metadata is ever sent to a server. This is especially important for HEIC because iPhone photos almost always carry GPS coordinates, capture timestamps and sometimes face-recognition data — none of which leaves your device.

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