Convert HEIC to WebP — Free, Fast & Private
If your iPhone photos are headed for a website, HEIC to WebP is the conversion you actually want. The common advice is to convert HEIC to JPEG, and for email or printing that is right — but for the web it wastes the file size you were trying to save. Going HEIC → JPEG → WebP also runs the image through two lossy encoders instead of one, so you end up with a larger file and a slightly worse one.
Going straight to WebP is a single encoding pass, and WebP typically lands 25–35% below a JPEG of comparable quality. For a page carrying a dozen photos from an iPhone, that difference is the difference between a fast page and a slow one.
What an iPhone actually stores in a HEIC
A HEIC is a container, and it usually holds more than one picture. Depending on how the photo was taken, it can carry the main image, a depth map used for Portrait mode, gain-map data for HDR display, and — for a Live Photo — a paired video track. Converting to WebP extracts the main image only. The depth map, the HDR gain map and the Live Photo motion are all discarded.
That is usually exactly what you want for the web, but it is irreversible, so keep the originals. If you later want to re-edit the Portrait blur or export the Live Photo, you need the HEIC, not the WebP.
Colour depth is also reduced. HEIC commonly stores 10-bit colour; WebP is 8-bit. On an ordinary photograph you will not see it. On a wide, smooth sunset gradient you occasionally can, as faint banding.
Location data is stripped, and that is deliberate
iPhone photos carry EXIF metadata that typically includes GPS coordinates precise enough to identify a home address, plus the capture timestamp and device model. MiniPx re-encodes the pixels through a canvas, which does not carry that metadata across — so the WebP you download does not contain your location.
Orientation is handled separately and correctly: the rotation flag in the EXIF is applied to the pixels themselves before encoding, so a photo taken sideways stays the right way up rather than flipping when the metadata disappears. That flip is a classic failure of naive HEIC converters.
When to choose something other than WebP
Use HEIC to JPG for anything leaving the web: email attachments, print labs, government upload forms (which almost universally demand JPEG), and older desktop software. Use HEIC to PNG when you need lossless output or transparency. Use HEIC to AVIF if you want the smallest possible file and control the fallback chain yourself.
Conversion runs entirely in your browser, so your photographs never reach a server — which matters more for a camera roll than for most things. Drop a whole batch at once and download them as a ZIP. If you are troubleshooting HEIC generally, our guide on why HEIC will not open on Windows covers the underlying causes.