HEIC to WebP Converter

What happens when you convert HEIC to WebP

• The image is decoded and written as a lossy WebP at 90 percent quality, keeping transparency.
• Browsers other than Safari cannot read HEIC, so a decoder of about 1.3 MB is fetched when you press Convert.

How to convert HEIC to WebP online

1. Press "Choose HEIC files" and select one or more files, or drag them onto the box. You can add files of any size your device can hold in memory.
2. Adjust the settings if you need to. Lower quality gives a smaller file.
3. Press "Convert to WebP". Images convert in a second or two each.
4. Save each WebP with its download button. Close the tab and every trace of the files is gone from memory.

Why convert HEIC to WebP?

HEIC files usually come from photos taken on iPhones and iPads since iOS 11. People convert them to WebP because WebP makes images much smaller for websites while keeping transparency.

In short, HEIC is good at what it was made for, and WebP is the more practical choice when the file has to open, upload or print somewhere else. Safari on Apple devices shows it; Chrome, Edge and Firefox cannot, while WebP opens in all current browsers; older Photoshop and Windows Photo versions cannot open it.

How to convert HEIC to WebP on Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android

On Windows

Open this page in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, drag your HEIC files in from File Explorer, and press Convert. Each WebP is saved to your Downloads folder.

On a Mac

Safari, Chrome and Firefox all work. Drag the HEIC files from Finder onto the drop zone and the WebP files land in Downloads.

On iPhone and iPad

Open the page in Safari and tap Choose HEIC files. You can pick from Photos or from the Files app. The converted WebP appears in Files, in the Downloads folder; to put it in your photo library, open it there, tap Share and choose Save Image. To stop the iPhone creating HEIC files in future, go to Settings, Camera, Formats and choose Most Compatible.

On Android

Open the page in Chrome, tap Choose HEIC files and pick them from Files or your gallery. The WebP is saved to the Download folder, where any file manager can find it.

Best settings for HEIC to WebP

WebP is lossy, so the Quality setting trades file size against detail. Best is 95, High is 90, Medium is 80 and Small file is 65 on the usual 0 to 100 scale. At High the difference from the HEIC is invisible for photos; at Small file you may see softness around text and fine patterns.

The Maximum width setting shrinks large images before encoding. A 4000 pixel phone photo reduced to 1920 pixels loses three quarters of its pixels and most of its size, yet still fills a laptop screen.

HEIC vs WebP: the differences

About HEIC and WebP files

What is a HEIC file?

iPhones save photos as HEIC because it is roughly half the size of an equivalent JPG. The catch is compatibility: Windows needs an extra codec, and most upload forms and older software reject it.

What is a WebP file?

WebP can be lossy or lossless and still keep transparency, and at the same visual quality it usually lands 25 to 35 percent smaller than JPG. It is the reason so many images saved from websites turn out not to be JPGs.

HEIC to WebP not working? Common problems

• Colours look slightly different. Browsers convert images to the standard sRGB colour space when they decode them, so wide-gamut and CMYK images can shift a little.
• A phone photo comes out upright even though it looked sideways elsewhere. That is correct: the rotation stored in the photo is applied during conversion, so the WebP is always the right way up.
• The HEIC will not load. Some HEIC files hold depth maps or bursts; the main image is converted. If nothing loads, try again in Safari on the iPhone itself, or set Settings, Camera, Formats to Most Compatible for future photos.

Convert HEIC to WebP from the command line

If you work in a terminal, ImageMagick converts HEIC to WebP in one line:

magick input.heic -quality 90 output.webp

To convert every HEIC in a folder at once, use magick mogrify -format webp *.heic. Your ImageMagick build needs HEIC support (libheif), which the official installers include. The converter on this page does the same job without installing anything.