How to Batch Convert Hundreds of HEIC Files at Once
My mom handed me a USB drive last Christmas with “a few photos” she wanted printed. It had 847 HEIC files on it. The print shop’s website wanted JPGs. I wasn’t about to convert them one at a time.
If you’re staring at a folder full of HEIC files and need them in literally any other format, here’s how to get it done without losing your mind.
The browser approach (what I actually use)
heic.site handles batch conversion. Select all your HEIC files, drag them into the browser, and it chews through them one by one. When it’s done, hit “Download All as ZIP” and you get a single archive with everything converted.
Two things I like about this:
Nothing leaves my computer. The conversion runs entirely in the browser using WebAssembly. When I’m converting personal photos — family stuff, medical records I photographed, whatever — I don’t want them sitting on some company’s server. Even temporarily.
No installs. I was on my mom’s ancient laptop when I needed to do this. Downloading and installing ImageMagick or some random converter app wasn’t an option. A browser tab worked.
If you’re on a Mac using Safari, it’s noticeably faster because Safari can decode HEIC natively. On Chrome or Firefox, the WebAssembly decoder is solid but slower — expect a couple seconds per photo on an average laptop.
Picking your settings
Format choice. JPEG for anything you’re going to print, email, or upload to a service. WebP if the files are going on a website (25-35% smaller than JPEG). PNG only if you specifically need lossless quality — the files will be massive.
Quality. 92 for JPEG. That’s the sweet spot where the file is noticeably smaller than HEIC but you can’t tell the difference visually. (There’s a full HEIC vs JPG quality breakdown if you want the numbers.) Going lower to 85 saves more space and still looks fine for most photos. I wouldn’t go below 80 unless you’re really tight on space and don’t care about close-up quality.
Batch size. Your browser has limited memory. I’ve pushed through 200 files at a time on a newer laptop without issues, but on an older machine with 4 GB of RAM, you might want to do 50-75 at a time to avoid things getting sluggish.
Keeping things organized after
Once you’ve got your converted files, a few things that’ve saved me headaches:
Don’t delete the originals. HEIC files store 16-bit color data and may have depth maps or Live Photo data embedded. The JPEGs are for sharing; the originals are your archive. Storage is cheap. If you’re on Windows and can’t even view them, here’s how to open HEIC files.
The converter keeps filenames. IMG_1234.heic becomes IMG_1234.jpg. Your existing folder structure and naming system carries over, so sorting and finding things later works the same way.
Date-based folders. If you’re converting years of photos, break them into batches by date or event. Converting everything into one flat folder makes for a bad time later when you’re looking for a specific photo.
When your computer can’t keep up
If you’re working with thousands of files on an older device and the browser is struggling, heic.site Pro does the conversion server-side. Faster hardware, no strain on your machine. But honestly, for most people doing a one-time migration of their photo library, the free browser-based tool handles it fine. Just do it in batches.
Need your converted photos as PDFs instead? You can convert images to PDF the same way — right in the browser, no uploads.