October 11, 2026

Does converting HEIC to JPG remove metadata? Usually not

Converting an iPhone photo from HEIC to JPG feels like it should clean it. The file is rebuilt in a different format, so surely the old baggage gets left behind.

Mostly it doesn't. Conversion is a format change, not a privacy step, and the majority of converters treat your metadata as something worth preserving — because for photographers it usually is.

This matters here because the advice to "convert HEIC to JPG first" shows up all over this site, including in our own FAQs. That advice is about browser support, not cleaning. Worth separating the two.

What's in a HEIC in the first place

HEIC is Apple's name for an image in a HEIF container. The container holds the picture plus a set of extra items, and the EXIF block lives there as one of them — the same tags a JPEG would carry:

GPS Latitude / Longitude / Altitude
Date/Time Original
Make / Model              : Apple / iPhone 15 Pro
Lens Make / Lens Model
Software                  : 18.x

HEIF can also hold things JPEG has no slot for: a depth map from Portrait mode, auxiliary images like HDR gain maps, and several full images in one file for a burst.

What a converter actually does

Most converters decode the main image, re-encode it as JPEG, and then copy the EXIF block across because that's what users generally expect. Your GPS coordinates land in the new file intact.

That applies to desktop image tools, command-line utilities, and phone apps alike. There are exceptions in both directions, which is the real problem: you can't tell from the outside, and the behaviour changes between versions.

Three cases worth calling out:

Apple's automatic conversion. When you share a photo to an app or service that can't read HEIC, iOS converts it to JPEG for you. That conversion is about compatibility, so metadata generally comes along unless you also turn location off in the share sheet's Options.

Online converters. You upload the file to someone's server, they convert it, you download the result. Whether the output has GPS is almost beside the point: you already handed the original, coordinates included, to a stranger's machine. If your reason for converting is privacy, this is the one approach that defeats itself completely.

Command-line tools. These usually preserve metadata by default and need an explicit flag to drop it. In ImageMagick, for example:

magick photo.heic photo.jpg          # EXIF and GPS come along
magick photo.heic -strip photo.jpg   # metadata dropped

The flag is the part people miss.

What conversion does drop

Not nothing, to be fair:

Depth maps and auxiliary images. A JPEG has nowhere to put them.
Extra images in a burst or multi-image file. You get the primary image only.
HEIF-specific structures that have no JPEG equivalent.

So converting does shed some data. Just not the fields most people are worried about — GPS, timestamps, and device identifiers transfer cleanly, because JPEG has EXIF slots for all of them.

Check, don't assume

The behaviour varies enough between tools that the only reliable answer comes from your own file:

exiftool -a -G1 -GPS:all -Make -Model -DateTimeOriginal converted.jpg

Or drop it into the image metadata viewer, which reads the file in your browser without uploading it.

Run it on a photo you know has GPS. If the converted JPEG still lists coordinates, your converter is copying metadata, and anything you've already converted and shared went out with it.

Converting and cleaning in one step

If the goal is a clean JPEG, do both at once instead of converting and then hoping. Re-encoding through a canvas produces a JPEG from the decoded pixels alone, so no EXIF block exists to copy:

const canvas = document.createElement("canvas");
canvas.width = img.naturalWidth;
canvas.height = img.naturalHeight;
canvas.getContext("2d").drawImage(img, 0, 0);
canvas.toBlob(blob => { /* JPEG with no EXIF, no GPS */ }, "image/jpeg", 0.95);

One catch specific to HEIC: browsers can't decode it natively, so a browser-based tool can't take the HEIC directly. The practical order is:

Get a JPEG out of the photo — on iOS, Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible for new shots, or export as JPEG from the Files app for existing ones.
Clean that JPEG with the metadata cleaner or remove GPS from photo, locally in your browser.
Verify the result once with the viewer or exiftool.

Step 2 is the one that does the privacy work. Step 1 is only there because of browser format support.

The short version

Converting HEIC to JPG changes the container and usually carries EXIF and GPS straight into the new file. It does drop depth maps and extra burst images, but not the fields that identify where and when you were. Treat conversion and cleaning as two separate jobs, do the cleaning deliberately, and check the output rather than trusting the format change.