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Your iPhone photos are HEIC — here's how to convert them

You photograph a flat on your iPhone, everything looks fine in Photos, and then the upload fails — or the file arrives on someone's Windows laptop and refuses to open. The photo is not broken. It is in HEIC, and a lot of the web still does not accept it.

Here is what that actually is, why it bites when you are listing a property, and the fastest way around it.

What HEIC is

Since iOS 11, iPhones save photos as HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) instead of JPG. It is genuinely a better format: roughly half the file size of a JPG at the same quality, with support for 16-bit colour, transparency and Live Photos.

The problem is not quality. It is that HEIC is an Apple-led format, and support outside Apple's own software is still patchy — plenty of websites, upload forms, older Windows installs, some Android phones and a lot of business software simply do not read it.

The confusing part is that you rarely see the problem on your own phone. In Photos everything looks normal. The format only becomes visible at the moment you try to hand the file to something that is not an iPhone.

Why it matters when you are listing a property

A few specific ways this goes wrong:

  • Upload forms reject it. Many property sites — House101 included — accept JPG, PNG and WebP but not HEIC. You pick your photos, hit upload, and get an error that does not explain itself. Plenty of people conclude the site is broken and give up, which is how a good flat ends up listed with no photos at all.
  • The recipient cannot open it. You WhatsApp or email photos to an agent, a landlord or a buyer, and it lands on a Windows machine or an Android phone as a file nothing will open.
  • It breaks quietly in the middle of a chain. A photo that survives your phone and your Mac can still fail at a print shop, a management office, or whatever software the other side is using.

The fastest fix: convert before you upload

You do not need to install anything. An online heic converter turns iPhone HEIC files into JPG, PNG, WebP or PDF straight in the browser, which is the practical option when you are working from a phone between viewings.

For property photos, the sensible choices are:

  • HEIC → JPG for anything you are uploading to a listing, emailing, or sending to someone whose setup you do not control. JPG is the safest format that exists — everything opens it.
  • HEIC → PNG only if you need a floor plan or a document scan to stay perfectly sharp. PNG files are much larger, so do not use it for room photos.
  • HEIC → WebP if you want smaller files and know the destination accepts it. Good for the web, less universal than JPG.
  • HEIC → PDF when you are sending a set of documents rather than photos — a floor plan, an ID copy, a tenancy agreement — and want it to arrive as one file.

Convert the whole batch at once rather than one at a time, and keep the originals until the listing is live and the photos have appeared correctly.

Or stop your iPhone producing HEIC in the first place

If you take property photos regularly, change the setting once and forget about it:

Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible

Your iPhone then shoots JPG directly. Photos take a little more space, and you lose HEIC's depth and colour advantages, but every upload form and every recipient will accept them without a thought. For anyone whose photos exist to be sent to other people, that trade is usually worth it.

Two things worth knowing:

  • This only affects new photos. Everything already in your camera roll stays HEIC, so you will still need to convert the existing ones.
  • There is a separate setting under Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC. Setting it to Automatic converts to JPG when you transfer by cable — but it does nothing for AirDrop, messaging apps or web uploads, which is where the problem usually shows up.

When to keep HEIC

Do not convert everything reflexively. HEIC is the better format when the photos are staying inside Apple's world — your own library, iCloud, AirDrop to another iPhone, editing on a Mac. It is half the size for the same quality, which matters when you have thousands of photos on a phone.

Convert at the point of handover: when a photo is about to leave your devices and go somewhere you do not control.

A workflow that avoids the problem entirely

  1. Shoot the flat as normal on your iPhone.
  2. Pick your eight to twelve keepers in Photos.
  3. Run that batch through a converter to JPG.
  4. Upload the JPGs to your listing and confirm every photo appears.
  5. Keep the HEIC originals on your phone in case you need to re-edit at full quality.

If you list properties often, set Most Compatible once and skip steps 3 and 5 permanently.

One last thing worth checking: after uploading, actually look at your live listing on a phone and on a computer. A photo that uploaded is not necessarily a photo that displays, and the listing page is what buyers see — not your camera roll.

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