How to Stop Your iPhone Saving Photos as HEIC
If you're tired of dealing with HEIC compatibility problems, you can just make your iPhone save photos as JPG from the start. Here's how.
Change the camera format
- Open Settings
- Scroll down and tap Camera
- Tap Formats
- Select Most Compatible
That's it. Your photos will now save as JPG instead of HEIC.
The tradeoffs
Before you do this, you should know what you're giving up:
Storage space. HEIC files are about half the size of equivalent JPGs. If you take a lot of photos, you'll fill up your phone faster.
Image quality. HEIC supports 16-bit color and better compression. JPG is 8-bit. For most photos you won't notice, but technically HEIC preserves more detail.
Live Photos still work. But they take up more space too.
For most people, the convenience of universal compatibility is worth the tradeoffs. Storage is cheap, and the quality difference is invisible in normal use.
Alternative: Auto-convert on transfer
If you want the storage benefits of HEIC on your phone but want JPGs when you transfer to a computer, there's a middle ground:
- Go to Settings → Photos
- Under "Transfer to Mac or PC"
- Select Automatic
Now your phone stores HEIC (saving space), but when you transfer photos to a computer, they get converted to JPG automatically.
This is probably the best of both worlds for most people.
What about photos you've already taken?
Changing these settings only affects new photos. All your existing HEIC photos stay as HEIC.
To convert existing photos, you'll need to either:
- Transfer them with "Automatic" enabled
- Use a converter to batch convert them to JPG
If you have years of HEIC photos, I'd honestly just leave them as HEIC and convert individual ones when you need to. Converting everything is overkill unless you really have specific compatibility needs.
My recommendation
Keep HEIC enabled. Use the "Automatic" transfer setting. Convert individual photos when needed.
HEIC is genuinely better for storage and quality. The compatibility issues are annoying but temporary—as Windows and other platforms improve their support. In the meantime converting on demand takes like 30 seconds when you need to share something.
But if you just want to never think about this again and don't care about the storage space, switching to "Most Compatible" is a perfectly valid choice. No judgment here.