About FreeHEIC
FreeHEIC is a small, independent website with one job: turning HEIC photos from iPhones, iPads and cameras into JPG or PNG files that open everywhere, quickly and without giving your photos to anyone.
Why this site exists
Apple devices have saved photos as HEIC since iOS 11. The format is efficient, but outside the Apple world it still causes daily friction: Windows asks for a paid extension, online forms reject the files, print shops cannot read them and relatives on Android or older computers see an error instead of a picture.
Most online converters solve this by uploading your photos to their servers. We think that is the wrong trade for personal pictures that can show faces, homes, documents and the place they were taken. FreeHEIC was built to do the same job entirely on your own device.
How the conversion works
When you open the converter, your browser downloads a small decoding program: libheif, an open-source HEIF library, compiled to WebAssembly so it can run inside the web page at close to native speed. When you add a photo, your browser reads the file from your disk, libheif decodes it in a background worker, and the picture is encoded again as JPG or PNG. Several photos are processed in parallel on computers with more than one processor core.
The photo’s color profile (usually the wide Display P3 space on iPhones) is written into the new file, and the rotation is applied so portrait shots stay upright. The date, camera and location details are kept by default; you can untick “Keep photo details” to strip them. JPG files are accepted too, so a folder that mixes HEIC and JPG photos can go through in one batch. libheif is used unmodified under the LGPL-3.0 licence, and a link to its source code is shown under the converter.
None of your photos are sent to us or to anyone else. Once the page has loaded, the conversion keeps working even if your connection drops.
What is free
The converter is free to use, without an account, a watermark or a daily cap. Each batch can hold up to 20 photos of up to 50 MB each, and you can run as many batches as you like. Converted photos can be downloaded one by one or together as a ZIP file.
How the site is paid for
FreeHEIC is funded by advertising. Ads are shown around the converter and on the guides, never inside your converted files. We also use Google Analytics to see which pages and options are used, so we know what to improve. Neither of them receives your photos, because the photos never leave your device.
Privacy in one paragraph
Your photos are processed locally and never uploaded or stored by us. The site itself, like most websites, uses cookies and similar technologies for advertising and analytics, subject to the choices you make in the consent banner where one applies. The privacy policy explains exactly what is collected, by whom and how to opt out.
Who runs it and how to get in touch
FreeHEIC is an independent project operated from Romania. It is not affiliated with Apple, Microsoft or Google. If a photo does not convert correctly, if something in a guide is out of date, or if you have an idea for the site, write to contact@freeheic.com. Bug reports are most useful when they mention your browser, your device and what the converter showed; please don’t attach private photos unless you are comfortable sharing them.