How to Convert HEIC to PDF (iPhone Photos)

A common wall: you need to submit a set of iPhone photos as one file, but the portal, form, or app doesn’t recognize HEIC. Here’s how to turn them into a single PDF for free, without emailing them to yourself first or installing a converter app.

Steps

1. Open HEIC to PDF and drop your .heic files — straight from your Photos app export or AirDrop. JPG and PNG work too if you have a mix.
2. Reorder the photos with the up/down controls until they’re in the sequence you want — each photo becomes one page.
3. Click Convert, then download your PDF.

Why HEIC needs converting in the first place

HEIC (High Efficiency Image Container) is the format iPhones and iPads use by default since iOS 11 — it stores photos at roughly half the file size of an equivalent JPG. The trade-off is compatibility: many websites, older apps, and most of Windows outside recent versions don’t read HEIC natively. Converting to PDF sidesteps that entirely, since PDF opens the same way everywhere.

What happens to image quality

Each HEIC is decoded locally and re-saved as a high-quality JPEG inside the PDF, placed on its own page at its original size. The difference is visually negligible for everyday use — the point is universal compatibility, not lossless archival.

Mixing formats

You’re not limited to HEIC alone — drop in a combination of HEIC, JPG, and PNG files, and they all land in the same PDF in the order you arrange them. This is handy when you’re combining a few iPhone photos with a screenshot or a scan someone else sent you as a JPG.

Notes

Decoding runs entirely on your device via WebAssembly, so photos — including personal ones — are never uploaded anywhere. HEIC decoding is powered by the open-source libheif project. Once you have your PDF, Compress PDF can shrink it further if the file is too large to email, or Merge PDF can combine it with other documents.