Your Client Sent HEIC Files. Your Website Only Takes JPG: A No-Install Fix

Every freelancer and small team knows this moment: a client sends a folder of iPhone photos, you try to upload them to the website, the CMS, or the print shop, and the upload fails. The files are not corrupt. They are HEIC, the format iPhones use by default, and most web uploaders still only accept JPG or PNG.

The fix is boring, which is why it is worth writing down once and reusing forever.

First, understand what you are dealing with. HEIC is a modern, efficient photo format. It is smaller than JPG at the same quality. The problem is purely compatibility: browsers, CMS uploaders, and print workflows were built around JPG, and many of them simply do not recognize a .heic extension. Renaming the file to .jpg does not convert it; it just produces a JPG-named file that still fails, or worse, uploads and then breaks downstream.

Second, convert a copy, never the original. Keep the client's HEIC files exactly as received, in their own folder. Convert into a separate folder, and deliver from there. If a conversion ever goes wrong — a color shift, a missing orientation flag — you still have the originals to redo it from. This rule has saved me more than once, and it costs nothing.

Third, do not install software for a one-off job. Client photos are also the worst candidates for upload-based converters: they are someone else's personal or commercial images, and sending them to a stranger's server just to change their format is an unnecessary risk. A browser-local converter does the whole job on your own machine. I built FileOnTap so you can do heic to jpg (https://fileontap.com/heic-to-jpg/) entirely in the browser: drop in the HEIC files, download JPGs, nothing is uploaded, no account needed.

Fourth, prevent the next round. Ask the client, or set the iPhone, to send JPG next time: Settings → Photos → Transfer to Mac or PC → Automatic makes the phone convert during transfer. But never depend on the client remembering — keep the converter bookmarked for the next folder that arrives as HEIC.

Disclosure: I'm the developer of FileOnTap. The "convert a copy, keep the originals, don't upload client photos" order is the real takeaway whichever tool you use.