Batch convert HEIC to JPG

Last updated: August 29, 2026

The real limit is not file count, it is daily quota

Free online converters put walls in unexpected places. CloudConvert's own pricing pagecaps the free tier at 10 conversions a day, with up to 5 running at the same time, and a 1GB limit per file; it doesn't state a limit on how many files can go into one batch. Hit the daily cap partway through a folder and the rest wait until tomorrow, regardless of how few files are left.

This converter works differently because nothing is uploaded in the first place: every HEIC file decodes and re-encodes inside your browser, so there's no server quota to run into, no per-day counter resetting at midnight, and no per-file size cap tied to a paid plan. A batch of 60 photos and a batch of 4 both just run, today and every day after.

The "convert lots of files at once" pitch isn't new, either: one popular HEIC converter's own homepageleads with a specific photo-count promise as its main selling point, and several dedicated batch-only converters exist besides. What's missing from that field isn't a bigger batch number, it's a converter that doesn't ration by the day.

Doing it on Windows without a website

IrfanView, the decades-old Windows image viewer, has a genuinely capable batch converter built in: File, Batch Conversion/Rename, point it at a folder of HEIC files, set the output format to JPG, and it processes the whole folder in one pass. The catch is that IrfanView only opens HEIC at all after installing its TOOLS plugin plus two separate Windows codec extensions, one of which costs money. We've written up that setup in full, since it trips up most people who try it, rather than repeating the codec walkthrough here.

Once the codecs are sorted, IrfanView's batch dialog is worth the setup: turning on Use Advanced Options in the same window adds resizing to the same pass, so a folder of full-resolution iPhone photos can come out both converted and downsized in one run. The trade-off is entirely upfront cost, installing and configuring three separate pieces of software before the first file converts, against zero setup for anyone who'd rather not.

Doing it on a Mac without a website

macOS has had a built-in way to do this since Monterey, no Shortcuts app or scripting required: select a folder of HEIC files in Finder, right-click, and choose Quick Actions, Convert Image. Apple's own documentation describes exactly this scenario, converting an .heic photo from your iPhone to a .jpeg or .png image, and the same dialog lets you choose an output size at the same time.

Preview offers a second route with more control over the output: select the files in Finder, open them together in Preview, press Command-A in the sidebar to select every thumbnail, then File, Export Selected Images. Preview can export to JPEG, PNG, TIFF and several other formats from that dialog, with a quality slider the Quick Action doesn't offer. The multi-select step itself isn't spelled out in Apple's own Preview guide, which only documents exporting one file at a time, but it's a well-documented workflow that works reliably across current macOS versions.

When the browser route is actually better

Neither path above needs this site, and both are worth using if a codec install or a Quick Action is already comfortable. The browser route wins when the files need to go somewhere else first, someone else's Windows PC without IrfanView installed, a Chromebook, a work machine where installing anything requires IT approval, or when a batch needs to move between a phone and a desktop without installing the same tool twice. It's also the only option that stays consistent across every OS: the same drop zone converts a batch on Windows, Mac, Linux, or a Chromebook, rather than three different native tools with three different codec requirements. For a single photo rather than a folder, the plain HEIC to JPG converter is the same engine without the batch UI.

The real constraint here is device memory, not a server-side rule: everything decodes and re-encodes on your own hardware, so a very large batch of high-resolution HEIC files on an older or low-memory machine runs slower than the same batch on a current laptop, and an extremely large batch can need splitting into two passes. That's an honest limit of running entirely client-side, not a quota this site chose to impose.

Under the hood, desktop browsers run several files at once across multiple workers, one per CPU core available, which is why a desktop batch finishes faster than the same batch would file by file. iPhones and other memory-constrained devices process one file at a time instead, a deliberate trade-off to avoid crashing the browser tab rather than a missing feature; a phone batch still finishes, just sequentially instead of in parallel.

Getting the whole batch out

Converted files download individually or as a single ZIP for the whole batch, built as files finish rather than assembled in memory first, so downloading a large batch doesn't stall the browser tab the way some naive implementations do. Filenames and orientation carry over from the originals inside the ZIP, so a folder that went in organized comes out organized.

That streaming approach matters more than it sounds: a ZIP library that holds every converted file in memory before writing the archive works fine for a handful of photos and then stalls or crashes the tab once a batch gets large, since the browser is briefly holding two full copies of every file, the converted image and the ZIP being assembled around it. Writing each file into the archive as soon as it's ready avoids that second copy entirely, which is the difference between a hundred-photo batch finishing smoothly and one that hangs at the last step.

On mobile specifically, a downloaded ZIP typically lands in a Downloads or Files folder rather than the Photos app, since browsers can't write directly into a phone's photo library. That's a platform limit, not something a bigger batch tool fixes; if the destination needs to be the photo gallery rather than a folder, saving images individually rather than as a ZIP is the more reliable path on a phone.

Bulk versus batch

Bulk and batch conversion mean the same thing here: converting many files in one operation rather than one at a time, and both terms show up depending on which one comes to mind first. Whichever word finds this page, the mechanism underneath is identical, drop everything at once, get everything back at once.

If the goal is a smaller folder rather than a different format, compressing HEIC in place keeps the original format and shrinks file size instead, useful when the destination already accepts HEIC and the only problem is storage or an upload cap. And for every other HEIC conversion this site handles beyond JPG, PNG, WebP and PDF outputs among them, the HEIC converter hub lists them all from one place.

Common questions