heic2jpg

heic2jpg is a fast HEIC to JPEG converter designed to resolve the compatibility gap between iPhone image files and common desktop workflows. Conversion runs in parallel across worker threads using pillow-heif for fast, in-process decoding.

🚀 Installation

1. Install the uv package manager with the official installer, or:

• macOS: brew install uv
• Windows: winget install astral-sh.uv
• Linux (Debian): apt-get install uv

2. Install the tool:

uv tool install heic2jpg

3. Test the installation (if the command is not recognised try uv tool update-shell and restart your terminal):

heic2jpg --version

Alternative (macOS only)

Install with Homebrew: brew install lucuma13/dit/heic2jpg

📖 Usage examples

Convert a single file:

heic2jpg path/to/photo.HEIC

Convert all files in directory:

heic2jpg path/to/photo/album
heic2jpg                        # current directory

Convert all files in current directory recursively, preserving metadata and timestamps:

heic2jpg -Rmt

Other options:

  -q, --quality [1-100] Target quality (default: 30)
  -m, --metadata        Preserve EXIF metadata
  -t, --times           Preserve source file timestamps
  -k, --keep            Keep originals (default: delete after conversion)
  -R, --recursive       Recurse into subdirectories when a directory is given
  -f, --force           Overwrite existing .jpg outputs

📊 Performance

pillow-heif's C code releases the Python's GIL during HEIF decode and JPEG encode. The default ThreadPoolExecutor therefore gets full CPU parallelism with no per-worker process startup cost. That offers over 6x the speed of traditional ImageMagick workflows.

Note: absolute throughput will vary with CPU and disk speed.