Convert HEIC to WebP

HEIC → WebP — formats compared

About HEIC

HEIC is Apple's name for a HEIF container holding HEVC (H.265) compressed photos — the default iPhone and iPad camera format since iOS 11. It packs roughly the same picture into about half the size of a JPEG and can store 10-bit colour, depth maps and Live Photo frames.

About WebP

WebP is a modern raster format from Google that does both lossy and lossless compression, supports transparency, and runs about 25–34% smaller than JPEG at the same visual quality (per Google's own compression study).

What changes in this conversion

Transparency is preserved where it exists, since both HEIC and WebP support an alpha channel — though a normal iPhone camera photo has none to carry over. HEIC and WebP are both lossy, so the photo is re-encoded a single time; at a high quality setting the result is visually indistinguishable from the source. At matching quality WebP typically lands about 25–34% smaller than an equivalent JPEG.

When to convert HEIC → WebP

Converting HEIC to WebP keeps a small, modern file while gaining the broad browser support HEIC lacks — ideal for putting iPhone photos on a website without bloating the page.

Worth knowing: Both formats are already efficient, so the WebP won't necessarily be smaller than the HEIC; it re-encodes the photo once, and a few older desktop apps still can't preview WebP even though every current browser can.