HEIC has a bad name. It’s a lightweight file format that lets you take high-quality photos and videos without taking up a ton of storage space. However, people don’t hate it because they like working with maximum cloud storage, but because it’s incompatible with certain software. No one wants to receive a photo they can’t open or use, and HEIC is often the culprit when that happens.

HEIC is here to stay, and the list of programs that support it keeps growing. However, if you need to convert HEIC (or HEIF) to JPG (or JPEG) on Windows for whatever reason, it's pretty easy to do.

In the past, you needed a third-party app to convert HEIC photos from an iPhone to your Windows PC. That’s no longer the case: Windows support for HEIC has improved dramatically since then. You can even open HEIC photos in your PC’s Photos app. However, many programs still can’t read or work with HEIC files, so you’ll still need to convert them to JPG. Luckily, Windows makes that easy, too.

To get started, you’ll need to install HEIF image extensions on your PC. This Microsoft plugin allows you to open HEIC files in the Photos app. It may already be installed by default on Windows 11, but double-check before continuing.