Convert HEIC photos to WebP in your browser

A HEIC file holds a photo encoded with the HEVC codec inside a HEIF container, defined in the ISO/IEC 23008-12 standard[1]. The iPhone 7 and later models running iOS 11 or later save photos in this format[2], and since Android 10 in 2019, so do phones with a suitable hardware encoder[1].

WebP was developed by Google, which announced the format on 30 September 2010. It stores images with lossy or lossless compression and supports transparency and animation[3]. According to MDN, lossy WebP is on average 25 to 35 percent smaller than JPEG at similar visual quality[4], and it displays in Chrome 32, Edge 18, Firefox 65, Safari 16 and later[5].

Among browsers, only Safari 17 and later displays HEIC files[6], and Windows opens them only when two extensions from the Microsoft Store are installed[7]. A photo converted to WebP can go on a web page and display in every current browser, and in our measurement every WebP file came out smaller than the original.

1. Drag your photos onto the Add files field, or click it and pick files. The converter accepts .heic and .heif files, several at once.
2. Move the Set WebP quality slider to a value between 60 and 95 percent (default 80); the current value appears next to its name.
3. Click Convert. Each finished photo shows Done.
4. Save one file with Download or all of them with Download all, which packs several files into a ZIP archive. Only the extension changes, to .webp.

The queue shows the Before and After weight of each file with the difference in percent and, below the buttons, the totals for the batch.

Moving the slider sets finished files back to Pending, so clicking Convert again saves them with the new setting.

Everything happens in your browser: its HEVC decoder reads the HEIC photo, and the browser saves the WebP, or the libwebp library when the browser cannot.

At the default slider setting, each of the eight photos came out smaller, by 41 to 71 percent. The Christmas shelf photo went from 1.38 MB to 415.3 KB, and the café interior from 1.64 MB to 997.4 KB. The whole batch weighed 13.1 MB as HEIC and 5.95 MB as WebP.

The converter encodes the image as a new WebP at the quality set on the slider, so that setting decides most of the weight. At 95 percent, the car photo from the iPhone 12 Pro weighs 2.59 MB, which is 39 percent larger than the HEIC file, and at the default 80 percent it weighs 910.9 KB.

WebP uses lossy compression here, so some of the finest detail disappears. Look at the result zoomed in before you delete the originals. MDN also advises keeping a fallback version of the image in JPEG or PNG when you use WebP on a web page[4], and the HEIC to JPG converter prepares one.

EXIF data does not carry over to the WebP file. The device model, date taken and location coordinates are removed with it. We checked this on the eight files from our measurement: each HEIC file had EXIF data with the device model, and none of the output files still had it.

In our measurement in Chrome, every WebP file got an sRGB color profile and 8 bits per channel. If a side of the image exceeds 16,383 pixels, the converter scales the image down proportionally to that limit, because the WebP format cannot store a longer side[4]. The photos in our measurement have at most 4,032 pixels on the longer side.

If you want an even smaller file and your audience uses newer browsers, compare the result with a file from the HEIC to AVIF converter. Smaller dimensions for a page column can be set in the Helios editor, and a WebP image saved from a website becomes a JPG in the WebP to JPG converter. Photos you already have as JPG become WebP in the JPG to WebP converter.