An iPhone photo in HEIC is efficient and high quality, but sometimes you specifically need a PNG — a form that requires it, a lossless master for editing, or a graphic with sharp edges that JPG would blur. This tool converts HEIC to PNG entirely inside your browser, losslessly, with no upload. The result is a standard .png that preserves every pixel of the decoded image exactly.
What makes it different is that nothing leaves your device. Decoding and re-encoding happen locally through WebAssembly. Your photo stays on your device, the conversion runs in a second or two, and you download a PNG that behaves the way PNGs always have — universally supported and pixel-perfect.
Why convert HEIC to PNG
PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is the format you reach for when fidelity matters more than size. Where JPEG throws detail away to stay small, PNG keeps every pixel exactly. That makes it the right choice in three situations:
- A form or system requires PNG. Some upload systems — particularly certain government, medical, and enterprise portals, and many systems built around scanned documents — accept PNG and reject JPEG (or HEIC). If the field says PNG, you need a PNG.
- You want a lossless master. If you’re going to edit, re-save, or archive a photo and you do not want generation loss to accumulate, a lossless copy is the safe starting point. Every future save from the PNG starts from exact pixels.
- The content is a graphic, screenshot, or has sharp edges. JPEG compression is built for the smooth gradients of photographs. On sharp transitions — text, line art, logos, screenshots, diagrams — it produces visible blockiness and ringing. PNG stays crisp, because it does not smooth those edges away.
The trade-off is size. PNG is lossless, so it cannot come close to JPEG’s or HEIC’s compression on a photograph. A full-resolution iPhone photo as a PNG is commonly 10× or more the bytes of the HEIC original — see the warning below. For sharing a photo or hitting a form’s size limit, JPEG is almost always the better choice. PNG is the right tool when fidelity or format is the constraint, not size.
A blunt warning: full-resolution photo PNGs are huge
This catches people off guard, so it deserves to be said plainly. A full-resolution iPhone photo converted to PNG is often 15–40 megabytes.
The reason is arithmetic. A 12-megapixel photo is about 4000×3000 pixels — roughly 12 million pixels, each stored as three bytes (red, green, blue), so the raw pixel data alone is around 36 megabytes. PNG applies lossless filtering and compression on top of that raw data, typically getting it down to somewhere between a third and a half of the raw size for a real photograph — which lands you at 12 to 20 megabytes, and busy or noisy photos can exceed that. HEIC achieved the same image in 1–3 megabytes because it is allowed to discard detail you won’t notice; PNG is not allowed to.
So if you convert a typical iPhone photo here at full resolution, expect a file that is many times the size of the HEIC you started with. That is not a bug — it is what lossless means. If the size surprises or blocks you:
- For a smaller photo, use Convert HEIC to JPG instead — photographs look the same to the eye at a fraction of the size.
- For a PNG under a specific size cap, use a PNG compressor page (for example, Compress HEIC to 100KB PNG) — it reduces dimensions to fit the target, losslessly.
PNG vs JPG: which to choose
Both formats are universally supported, so the choice is about what the image is and where it’s going.
| JPEG | PNG | |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossy — discards detail | Lossless — keeps every pixel |
| Typical photo size | Small (hundreds of KB to a few MB) | Large (tens of MB for a full photo) |
| Best for | Photographs, sharing, form uploads with a size limit | Graphics, screenshots, text, lossless masters, PNG-required forms |
| Sharp edges / text | Visible artifacts at high contrast | Crisp |
| Transparency | Not supported | Supported |
The rule of thumb: if it’s a photo, use JPEG; if it’s a graphic or you need pixel-perfect fidelity, use PNG. The one exception that flips this is a form that requires PNG regardless of content — then you need PNG, and the size is the cost.
How to convert HEIC to PNG, step by step
The tool is deliberately simple — no account, no settings menu, nothing to install.
- Open the converter on this page. The engine loads once, the first time you visit, and then runs locally.
- Drop your HEIC photo into the box, or click to select it from your device. The moment you choose a file, the tool decodes it and shows you a preview — useful, because most browsers cannot display HEIC natively, so without this step you would be guessing what you uploaded.
- Click Convert. Decode and lossless re-encode run locally. For a full-resolution phone photo this takes a second or two and produces a sizeable file.
- Compare the before and after side by side, so you can see exactly what the converted PNG looks like.
- Download the result. You get a standard
.pngfile, ready to share, upload, or archive.
Your original HEIC is never modified or deleted — the tool reads it and produces a new PNG. Nothing is uploaded; nothing leaves your device.
How the conversion works
It helps to understand what happens during conversion, especially since the privacy claim — nothing leaves your device — depends on it.
The conversion runs in two stages, both inside your browser, both executed by a small WebAssembly module.
1. Decode the HEIC
HEIC is a container holding image data compressed with HEVC. To turn it into a PNG, the tool first decodes it into raw pixels. The browser cannot do this on its own outside Safari, which is why a plain <img> tag pointed at a raw HEIC shows nothing. This tool loads a WebAssembly module containing a pure-Rust HEIC decoder; the module runs inside your browser’s sandbox, reads your file locally, and produces a raw pixel buffer for the next stage. The pixels never leave the browser.
2. Re-encode as PNG
With raw pixels in hand, the tool runs a PNG encoder. PNG applies a lossless prediction filter to each row and compresses the result (with zlib/DEFLATE), preserving every pixel exactly. The output is a standard .png, byte-for-byte compatible with anything that reads PNG. Because the encode is lossless, the pixels in the PNG match the decoded pixels precisely — no further quality loss is introduced at this step.
That is the whole of it. Two passes, one decode and one lossless encode, both running as WebAssembly inside your browser. No server round trip, no upload, no analytics on the image, no copy kept anywhere.
Related
- Convert HEIC to JPG — the right choice for photographs, where small size and universal compatibility matter more than lossless fidelity.
- Compress HEIC to 50KB PNG / 100KB PNG / 200KB PNG — a PNG under a size cap (lossless, reduced dimensions).
- Compress HEIC to 100KB — if the form accepts JPEG, you keep far more resolution at a small target.
- Reduce HEIC file size — a deeper walkthrough of getting HEIC smaller, in any format.
Frequently asked questions
Can it convert HEIC to PNG?
Yes. Drop in an HEIC file and the tool produces a standard PNG, decoded and re-encoded entirely in your browser. The conversion is lossless — every pixel of the decoded image is preserved exactly, with no quality loss introduced by the encoding.
Is my photo uploaded to a server?
No. Decoding and re-encoding run entirely in your browser via WebAssembly. Your HEIC file never leaves your device, nothing is stored, and no analytics are applied to your image. Close the tab and it's gone.
Why is my PNG so large?
Because PNG is lossless and uncompressed beyond simple filtering — it keeps every pixel exactly. A full 12-megapixel iPhone photo decoded to pixels and saved as PNG commonly lands at 15–40MB, often 10× or more the size of the HEIC original. HEIC is a highly efficient format; PNG trades size for perfect fidelity. If you need a small file, use JPEG instead — see Convert HEIC to JPG, or the compressor pages for an exact KB target.
PNG or JPG for photos?
For photographs, almost always JPG. JPG was designed for photos and produces small, good-looking files; PNG's lossless advantage is invisible on a photo but costs you many times the bytes. Choose PNG when you need lossless fidelity (archiving, editing masters), when a form requires PNG specifically, or for graphics, screenshots, and images with sharp edges, text, or transparency.
Is the conversion really lossless?
The PNG encoding step is lossless — it preserves the decoded pixels exactly, with none of the artifacting a JPEG encode would introduce. Note that your HEIC was already lossy-compressed when the phone captured it, so this tool cannot recover detail the camera discarded; it simply guarantees that no further loss happens during the HEIC-to-PNG step.
Why convert HEIC to PNG instead of JPG?
Three common reasons: a form or system requires PNG uploads and rejects JPG; you want a lossless master for editing or archiving, where every re-save must not degrade the image; or the content is a graphic, screenshot, logo, or image with text and sharp edges, where JPG's blockiness around high-contrast lines is visible and PNG stays crisp.
Will it work on my device/browser?
Yes — it runs in any modern browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari) on any device with WebAssembly support, which means anything made in the last several years. The HEIC file itself can come from an iPhone, an Android, a DSLR, an email attachment, or a download.
Is it free?
Yes — completely free, with no signup, no watermark, no account, and no plan to upgrade. There is nothing to buy.
Can I convert several HEIC photos at once?
One at a time. This keeps the tool simple, fast, and entirely local. If you have several photos to convert, repeat the process. Note that large full-resolution PNGs take a second or two each and produce sizeable files, so one at a time is also the comfortable pace.
Does the converted PNG keep my photo's metadata?
No. The result is a freshly encoded PNG with none of the original HEIC's EXIF data — camera settings, timestamp, and any embedded GPS location are stripped. For sharing, that is usually a feature. If you need to keep metadata, you'll need a tool that explicitly preserves EXIF; this one does not.
Will my photo stay the right way up?
The decoded pixels are re-encoded as-is. If your original relied on an EXIF orientation tag to display upright (many phone photos do), the converted PNG may appear rotated once the tag is gone. Check the before/after preview; if it looks wrong, rotate the photo in your phone's editor first, then convert.
Can I also make the PNG smaller?
Yes. If you need a PNG but also a file-size cap, use the PNG compressor pages instead — for example, compress HEIC to 100KB PNG. Because PNG is lossless, hitting a small target means reducing dimensions (there is no quality dial to turn), so the result stays lossless but at a lower resolution.
Do I need to install anything?
No. It runs in the browser. There is no app, no plugin, no software to install, and no account to create.
Is it safe to convert private photos here?
Yes. Your photo never leaves your device — there is no upload, no server processing, no copy kept anywhere. Decoding and re-encoding happen locally via WebAssembly, and when you close the tab the data is gone. There is no breach surface, because nothing was ever transmitted.
Does it work offline?
Once the page has loaded, the engine runs locally on your device. An internet connection is only needed to open the page initially; after that, conversion works without one.