Bulk convert HEIC to JPG, on a Mac, really easy

Getting your iPhone images onto your Mac is easy, but once there, there’s not much you can do with them because, since iOS 11, all iPhone images are encoded in the, much smaller, HEIC format.

I used to use Photos to convert them to jpg, but that’s a cumbersome method. Especially if you need to convert a bunch of images. I recently learned there’s a CLI tool that can also do this: sips . It’s already installed on your Mac. To use it to convert your HEIC image, simply run:

sips -s format jpeg image.HEIC --out image.jpg

To batch convert all HEIC images in a folder, use this:

sips -s format jpeg *.HEIC --out "./"

You can also create an alias so you don’t have to remember that line. Simply open up your ~/.bash_profile file with nano ~/.bash_profile and add the following to end of the file:

alias heic2jpg='sips -s format jpeg *.HEIC --out "./"'

Close it with CTRL-X and Y. Close your Terminal, re-open it and run:

heic2jpg

That’s it, all your HEIC images are now converted to jpg:

With this new alias, converting your HEIC images to jpg because as easy as pie.