How to Convert HEIC to JPG on Mac Without Any App

macOS can convert HEIC to JPG without installing anything, in four different ways. Most guides list all four and leave you to pick. The choice comes down to how many files you have — and two of the methods can quietly cost you something, which is worth knowing before you run them on a folder of holiday photos.

The fast one: Finder Quick Action

On macOS Monterey and later this is built into the right-click menu and most people have never noticed it.

1. Select your HEIC files in Finder
2. Right-click, hover over Quick Actions, choose Convert Image
3. Set format to JPEG, pick a size, click Convert

That is the whole thing. It works on one file or several hundred, creates new files alongside the originals, and needs no setup.

The one limitation: the size options are coarse — small, medium, large or actual size — with no quality slider. For most purposes that is fine. If you need control over the compression, use Preview instead.

For a handful, with control: Preview

Preview gives you a proper quality slider, and it batches too.

1. Select the files in Finder, right-click, Open With → Preview
2. In Preview, show the sidebar and press ⌘A to select everything
3. File → Export Selected Images
4. Set Format to JPEG and choose a quality
5. Pick an output folder

Quality around 85 is a sensible default. Push it to 95 if the photos are going to print. The originals are untouched.

Preview handles a couple of hundred files without complaint. Beyond that it gets slow and there is no way to keep folder structure — everything lands in one flat directory.

Note that this is Export, not Save As. Save As does not give you the format options.

For hundreds or thousands: the Terminal

If you are comfortable with a command line, this is by far the fastest route.

Open Terminal, navigate to the folder, and run:

sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 90 *.heic --out ./converted

That converts every HEIC in the folder at quality 90 and writes the results into a converted subfolder, leaving your originals alone. Create the folder first with mkdir converted.

sips is built into macOS, handles any volume, and is scriptable. It is the right tool for a photo library rather than a folder.

The one with a trap: Automator

Automator lets you build a right-click action that converts in one click, which is genuinely convenient if you do this weekly.

But be careful with one step. In Automator, the Change Type of Images action replaces your originals unless you add a Copy Finder Items action before it. Automator does prompt you about this, and it is easy to click past.

People have run this on a few hundred photos and watched their HEIC originals disappear with no undo. If you build the workflow, add the copy step first, then test it on two files you do not care about.

Automator also flattens nested folders into one output directory, and on recent macOS versions Apple has been steering new workflows toward the Shortcuts app instead.

Given the Quick Action above does most of the same job safely, Automator is only worth it if you want to chain steps — convert, resize and move in one action.

Two things that go wrong

Your JPGs look washed out.

This surprises people and it is not a conversion bug. Recent iPhones capture in the Display P3 colour space, which holds more saturated colours than sRGB. JPEG is usually handled as sRGB, so the most vivid colours have nowhere to go and get clipped or shifted. Reds and greens are where you notice it.

If colour accuracy matters, export through the Photos app instead — File → Export → Export Photos, where you can set the colour profile explicitly. For casual use the shift is small enough to ignore, but if you have looked at a converted photo and thought something was off, this is why.

"The file couldn't be exported" in Preview.

Usually a damaged or partially copied HEIC. Try opening it in the Photos app and exporting from there — Photos is more tolerant of imperfect files.

What happens to your metadata

Worth deciding rather than discovering.

The Photos app keeps EXIF by default when exporting, including the date, camera and GPS coordinates. Methods that decode and re-encode the pixels, including browser-based converters, generally drop it.

Both behaviours are useful in different situations. Keeping metadata matters if you organise by date or location. Dropping it matters if the photo is about to be posted publicly or sent to a stranger, since it carries the coordinates of wherever it was taken.

Pick the method that matches what you are doing with the file.

When you cannot use any of these

On a managed work Mac, or when you would rather not think about which built-in tool does what, our HEIC to JPG converter runs in the browser. The decoder works on your own machine, so nothing is uploaded, there is no file limit, and you can pull the results down as a ZIP.

It is also the right choice if you are on Windows half the time and want one method that works in both places.

If the converted files need to fit an upload limit, run them through the compressor afterwards.

Stopping it recurring

Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible on the iPhone saves JPEG from now on, at roughly double the storage per photo.

Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC → Automatic is the better middle ground — you keep HEIC on the phone and iOS converts during transfers to non-Apple devices.

Which should you use?

• A few files, no fuss: Finder Quick Action
• You want a quality slider: Preview, Export Selected Images
• Hundreds or thousands: sips in Terminal
• Every week, same job: Automator, with the copy step
• Colour accuracy matters: export from Photos with the profile set
• Cross-platform or locked-down machine: a browser-based converter