Convert HEIC to PNG on Mac (Offline)

HEIC is what iPhones save by default. It's small, but plenty of Windows apps, web forms and older editors still can't open it. PNG opens almost everywhere and is lossless, so nothing more is lost on the way. Choose PNG when the photo will be edited again or when every pixel matters; for sharing or uploading, JPG is usually the better fit because it's far smaller.

PNG keeps every pixel of the decoded photo, so there's no quality setting and no further loss. The price is size: a photo that was 1.5 MB as HEIC became 17.5 MB as PNG in our test (11.4× the size). If size matters, turn on Resize and set a longest edge, or convert to JPG instead.

With Keep metadata on (the default), the camera model was kept, the date taken was kept and the GPS location was kept in our test. Turn Keep metadata off before sharing photos publicly: camera, date and location data are then left out, and the orientation is still kept so the photo isn't turned sideways.

Drop hundreds of HEIC files at once. Several images are converted at the same time, and if one file fails the rest still finish; the job list shows which one didn't. Converted files get new names next to the originals, so nothing is overwritten.

Finder can do this without any app: select the HEIC files, Control-click, choose Quick Actions ▸ Convert Image, set Format to PNG and click Convert to PNG. Preview works too: open the photo, choose File ▸ Export and pick PNG in the Format menu.

• Finder's Convert Image offers JPEG, PNG and HEIF, with sizes from Small to Actual Size, but no way to choose the dimensions yourself.
• Preview exports one image at a time unless you select several in its sidebar first, and Apple Community users report that batch exports sometimes skip files.