Manatee

How to convert HEIC to PNG on a Mac

· 6 min read

HEIC is the efficient photo format iPhones and recent Macs use by default, and PNG is a lossless format that every app, browser, and operating system can open. Converting HEIC to PNG gives you a file that will work anywhere, at the cost of a much larger size. The fastest way on a Mac is to drop the photo on a converter, choose PNG, and save; Preview and Photos can also do it.

What HEIC is, and why your photos are in it

HEIC is a High Efficiency Image File: a container built on the HEVC compression standard. Apple made it the default camera format on the iPhone starting with iOS 11, and Macs handle it natively, which is why the photos you pull off your phone so often arrive with a .heic extension. Its whole appeal is efficiency. A HEIC photo is roughly half the size of the same picture as a JPEG at similar quality, so a full camera roll takes up far less space.

The catch is compatibility. Outside the Apple world, and on some older software and websites, HEIC is not recognized, so a file that looks fine on your Mac can refuse to open on a Windows PC or fail to upload to a web form. That is usually the moment people go looking for a conversion: the photo is fine, but the place it needs to go cannot read the format. A HEIC file can also carry extras that a plain image does not, such as the short motion clip of a Live Photo or depth information, which is worth knowing before you convert.

Why convert HEIC to PNG, and whether PNG is the right target

The reason to convert is almost always compatibility, or a specific tool that demands PNG. PNG is understood universally and is lossless, so it is a safe target when you want the picture to open everywhere or to feed it into an editor without adding any new compression.

It is worth pausing on the choice of target, though, because PNG is not always the best one. PNG is lossless, and a photograph stored losslessly is large; converting a HEIC photo to PNG can produce a file several times bigger than the HEIC, and even bigger than a JPEG of the same image. If your goal is simply to open the photo on another device or attach it to an email, JPEG is often the more practical target: still widely compatible, but small. Choose PNG specifically when a tool requires it, or when you want a lossless copy for editing and do not mind the size.

Convert HEIC to PNG on a Mac

Manatee converts the file in seconds and can take a whole folder of HEIC photos at once:

  1. Open Manatee and choose Convert, or drag the HEIC file onto its menu bar icon.
  2. Pick PNG as the target.
  3. Drop in the file, or several of them. Each shows in the job list with progress.
  4. The new PNG lands next to the original. The HEIC is left untouched.

It runs entirely on your Mac, with nothing uploaded and no account, and the original HEIC is never modified, so you keep the compact version alongside the new one.

There are two built-in routes as well. In Preview:

  1. Open the HEIC in Preview.
  2. Choose File, then Export.
  3. Set the Format to PNG, holding the Option key first if PNG is not listed.
  4. Click Save.

Or in Photos, select the image, choose File, then Export, then Export Photo, and set the Photo Kind to PNG. Both are fine for a handful of images; for a large set, converting one at a time gets slow, and Preview and Photos convert the still image only.

What you keep and what you lose

A HEIC photo is normally already lossy, because HEVC compresses it much like JPEG does. Converting to PNG does not undo that; it copies the picture exactly as it currently looks into a lossless container. So you gain universal compatibility and a file that will not degrade further, but you do not gain any recovered detail, and you do give up HEIC’s efficiency: the PNG will be considerably larger.

The extras a HEIC can hold do not carry over. If the file came from a Live Photo, the short motion clip is not part of a PNG; you get a single still frame. Depth or portrait data is likewise dropped. For a normal photo none of this matters, but if the moving or depth part was the point, converting to a flat image is a one-way trip. As always, keep the HEIC as your original so you still have everything it contained.

One more practical note: converting is a good moment to think about batches. If you have a whole folder of HEIC files from an import, converting them one at a time is slow, so a tool that takes a folder and writes each PNG in a single pass saves real time. Whichever route you use, the color and detail you see on screen carry across intact; it is only the size and the format-specific extras that change.

Questions

Should I convert to PNG or JPEG?

Use PNG when a tool specifically requires it or you want a lossless copy for editing. If you only need the photo to open on another device or upload somewhere, JPEG is usually better: broadly compatible and far smaller than PNG.

Why is the PNG so much bigger than the HEIC?

HEIC is highly efficient and lossy, so it stores a photo in very little space. PNG is lossless and keeps every pixel, which for a photograph takes far more room. A PNG several times the size of the HEIC is normal.

Does converting lose quality?

The conversion itself does not add loss; PNG stores the image exactly as the HEIC looks. But it cannot recover the detail HEIC already compressed away, so the result matches the HEIC and is not any sharper.

What happens to a Live Photo?

You get the still frame only. The short motion clip and any depth information are not part of a PNG. Keep the original HEIC if you want to preserve the moving version.