PixHeic
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How to Convert HEIC to JPG Without Losing EXIF Data or GPS Location
Straight answer: almost every browser-based converter, this one included, drops your EXIF block when it re-encodes the image. Here is exactly what survives, what does not, and three reliable ways to keep your capture dates and coordinates.
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HEIC to JPG converter
Read this before you convert
The JPGs from this converter contain no EXIF metadata — no capture date, no GPS coordinates, no camera or lens data. Keep your original .heic files. They still hold every tag, and the section below shows how to copy that metadata onto the converted JPGs.
Drop your HEIC photos here
or pick them from your device — conversion starts automatically
Supports .heic and .heif from iPhone, iPad and modern Android cameras
Conversion settings
Higher keeps more detail. Quality has no effect on metadata — none is written at any setting.
Ready to convert
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Your files
Nothing queued yet. Converted JPGs appear here — remember to keep the HEIC originals as your metadata master copies.
What EXIF metadata actually is
EXIF is a block of structured data your camera writes into the file alongside the pixels. On an iPhone photo it typically holds the capture date and time, GPS coordinates and altitude, the camera and lens model, and the exposure settings — shutter speed, aperture, ISO, focal length — plus the orientation the phone was held in.
For most photos it is invisible plumbing. For some it is the entire value: an insurance claim that has to prove when damage occurred, fieldwork whose coordinates are the data, a family archive where the dates are what let Photos build a timeline at all.
Why converters lose it
The two formats store metadata in completely different places. HEIC keeps EXIF in a metadata box inside an ISO-BMFF container; JPEG keeps it in an APP1 segment at the head of the file. A converter that decodes the image to a canvas or bitmap and re-encodes it produces pixels only — unless it deliberately reads the source metadata and writes it into the new header, that information never makes the trip. Some cloud services also strip it on purpose, for privacy or to shave bytes.
PixHeic is in the first category, and we would rather tell you than let you find out later. Here is exactly what comes through:
| What | Survives? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Image pixels | Kept | Full quality at your chosen setting |
| Resolution | Kept | Original dimensions, never downscaled |
| Orientation | Kept | Baked into the pixels, so nothing arrives sideways |
| Capture date & time | Lost | File date becomes the download time |
| GPS coordinates | Lost | Deliberate benefit when sharing publicly |
| Camera, lens, exposure | Lost | Shutter, aperture, ISO, focal length |
| Colour profile | Lost | Output is standard sRGB |
Three ways to keep your metadata
1. Keep the originals. The simplest and the one that always works. Your HEIC files still contain every tag, so archive them and treat the JPGs as distribution copies. Never delete the source after converting if the dates matter.
2. Copy the tags across with ExifTool. Free, scriptable, and the standard tool for this. Convert here first, then transplant the metadata from the original onto the JPG:
# one photo exiftool -TagsFromFile IMG_0001.HEIC -all:all -overwrite_original IMG_0001.jpg # a whole folder, matching by filename exiftool -TagsFromFile %d%f.HEIC -all:all -overwrite_original -ext jpg .
3. Export from an app that carries EXIF. On a Mac, opening the HEIC in Preview and choosing File › Export as JPEG retains the metadata. Lightroom, Capture One and Photoshop's Export As do the same. These are slower for a large batch, but need no command line.
Coming to PixHeic: metadata passthrough.
We are building an option to read the EXIF block out of the HEIC container and write it into the JPG's APP1 header, with a toggle so you can still strip it when sharing. This page will be updated the day it ships. Until then, the table above is the accurate picture.
Frequently asked questions
Does converting on PixHeic strip my photo's creation date?
Yes. The converter decodes your HEIC to raw pixels and re-encodes them as a JPG, and the EXIF block does not come along. The result has no capture date, no GPS coordinates and no camera information — your computer will show its creation date as the moment you downloaded it.
Your original HEIC still holds all of it. Keep those files if the dates matter, and use ExifTool or macOS Preview, as described above, to carry the metadata onto the JPG. Metadata passthrough is on our roadmap and this page will be updated when it ships.
Is my location data safe if processing stays in the browser?
Yes, on both counts. Your photo is never uploaded — the decoder is a WebAssembly module running inside your browser tab, so the file is read from your device into memory and converted there. Check it yourself in the Network tab of your browser's developer tools, or disconnect from the internet after this page has loaded and convert anyway.
And because the conversion drops the EXIF block, the JPG you download carries no GPS coordinates at all. If you are converting in order to post or send the photos, that is a real privacy benefit rather than a shortcoming — it is only a problem when the coordinates are the thing you wanted to keep.
Why do most online HEIC converters lose EXIF data?
Because of how conversion works, not because they are taking something from you. HEIC stores EXIF in a metadata box inside its container; JPEG stores it in an APP1 segment at the start of the file. Any tool that renders the image and re-encodes it outputs pixels alone, so unless it explicitly reads the source metadata and writes it into the new header, the tags are simply not there to begin with.
Some server-side services do strip metadata deliberately as well, either as a privacy default or to reduce file size. Worth checking either way: if a converter promises to preserve EXIF, verify it on one photo with ExifTool before trusting a batch to it.