WebP to HEIC on Apple devices
This one is nearly always an Apple problem rather than a format problem. You have a WebP — downloaded, exported by a site’s image pipeline, handed over by a designer — something in Apple’s world will not take it, and you have gone looking for the format Apple uses. HEIC is not available to any web tool, and it is also not the fix: whatever refused the WebP will almost certainly accept AVIF or JPG.
Nothing is uploaded. Every image stays in this browser tab —here is how that works.
What is actually refusing the file
Before converting anything, it is worth naming the thing that said no, because the answer differs.
If it is Safari or a website, WebP is not the problem — Safari has displayed WebP since version 14, and it is very unlikely to be what broke. If it is Preview or Quick Look, modern macOS opens WebP fine, so the file may be corrupt or misnamed rather than unsupported. If it is Photos, an older app, a print service, or an upload form with a fixed list of accepted types, that is a genuine refusal, and it is the common case.
Notice that none of those is a request for HEIC specifically. They are refusals of WebP, and the thing they will all accept is a format that has been around long enough to be on everybody’s list.
HEIC would not have been the fix anyway
Even with a licensed encoder in your hands, HEIC would be an odd choice here. It is the least portable format Apple ships: outside Apple’s ecosystem it opens on almost nothing without a paid add-on, so converting a file into HEIC to solve a compatibility problem trades one narrow format for a narrower one.
It buys nothing in an iCloud photo library either. Photos stores what you import rather than re-encoding it, so handing it a HEIC instead of a JPG changes only the bytes you handed over.
The genuine use for HEIC is the one Apple built it for — a camera writing its own photographs efficiently at capture time. It was never an interchange format, and using it as one is how people end up on pages like this.
AVIF, with one version check
AVIF is what a modern Apple device will take happily while remaining a file the rest of the world can open. It is the same generation of technology as HEIC — a contemporary video codec’s intra-frame coding applied to a still — built on AV1 instead of HEVC, and AV1 is royalty-free, which is the entire reason it is available here at all.
Against your WebP, expect meaningfully smaller at matched quality; against a JPG of the same picture, dramatically smaller. Transparency, wide colour and high dynamic range all survive if the source carries them.
The version check is macOS Ventura and iOS 16. From those releases AVIF decoding is part of the system, so it appears in Quick Look, Preview, Safari and Messages without anyone installing anything; on a Mac still running Monterey it will not. If you are handing files to people whose machines you cannot see, JPG remains the format with no argument attached — larger, and never refused.
The re-encode you cannot avoid
Most WebP files in circulation are lossy: a website’s pipeline made them from a JPEG at a quality chosen for bandwidth. Decoding one and encoding it again as AVIF runs the trade a second time, over pixels that already carry the first pass’s artefacts. Kept at a high setting the result is fine and still much smaller than the input; pushed low, it compounds visibly.
The exception is a lossless WebP, which is what a screenshot saved out of a browser usually is. That file is pixel-exact, so converting it to a lossy AVIF is the first loss it has ever taken — and if there is small text in it, PNG is the conversion you actually want.
If you do need a .heic
Apple’s encoder is the only practical source. Settings › Camera › Formats › High Efficiency on an iPhone or iPad makes the camera produce HEIC directly, which is the answer if you want HEIC photographs going forward. For a file you already have, Preview › File › Export on a Mac offers HEIF, and Photos exports HEIC from a library.
Both run the hardware encoder Apple licenses for its own silicon. That licence is the difference between what a Mac can do and what a web page can, and it is not a gap that closes.
Questions people ask about this conversion
Why can this site not write HEIC?
Because a HEIC is HEVC data in a container, and HEVC encoding is licensed by patent pools that charge per unit. No browser exposes an encoder, and no free implementation exists that a web page could legally download and run. The library that reads HEIC here decodes only, which is as far as the licensing allows anyone to go for free.
Will a Mac or an iPhone open an AVIF?
On macOS Ventura and iOS 16 and later, yes — AVIF decoding went into the system image framework in those releases, so Safari, Quick Look, Preview and Messages all display one. Anything older will not, and that is the single thing worth checking before you send somebody a folder of them.
Should I just use JPG instead?
If the file is going to somebody whose software you cannot see, yes. JPG is the answer with no compatibility question attached anywhere, and the only cost is that the file is larger. AVIF is the better call when you control both ends, or when the image is headed for a web page rather than a person’s desktop.
Is converting WebP to AVIF a second lossy pass?
Usually, yes. Most WebP files on the web are lossy, so decoding one and re-encoding it as AVIF runs the trade a second time. Keep the quality high and the result is still comfortably smaller than the WebP was — but if you can get hold of whatever the WebP was made from, start there instead.
How would I get a real HEIC?
From Apple’s own encoder. An iPhone or iPad set to Settings › Camera › Formats › High Efficiency writes HEIC straight out of the camera, and on a Mac, Preview and Photos will export HEIF or HEIC from a file you already have. Those use the licensed hardware encoder, which is exactly the piece a web page has no access to.
Related
Other things you can turn a WebP into
Try it with your own file
Drop an image in and see the result before you download anything.