Converting an iPhone photo to JPG often resets its creation date to right now and wipes the map location. Here is why browser tools drop that data, what native system exports keep, and how to copy your timestamps over.
Browser canvas conversions wipe EXIF metadata clean. When a web tool decodes a HEIC file and draws the pixels onto an HTML5 canvas to export a fresh JPG, the browser generates a brand-new file with zero camera tags, no GPS coordinates, and today's timestamp.
File system dates are not EXIF dates. Even if you copy the original camera tags back into your new JPG, Windows Explorer and macOS Finder will still sort the file by when the conversion happened unless you explicitly overwrite the file creation date.
Native OS tools preserve tags unless you tell them not to. Built-in converters on macOS and iOS copy the EXIF block into the JPG segment by default, though a single toggle in the iPhone share sheet can strip location data before the file ever leaves your phone.
Inside an iPhone HEIC file, your metadata lives in an Exif item box indexed by the container's iinf (item information) structure. Inside a standard JPG, that same data must live in an APP1 marker segment right at the start of the file.
Browser-based converters, including ours, decode the compressed HEVC image stream into raw RGB pixels and paint them onto an HTML5 <canvas> element. We do this because most browsers cannot render HEIC natively. When the browser's toBlob('image/jpeg') function encodes those pixels into a JPG, it only sees the pixel grid on the canvas. It has no awareness of the original container's Exif box.
For privacy, this automatic stripping is a feature: you never accidentally upload your home GPS coordinates to a public forum or marketplace. For organising a family photo archive, it is a headache. The orientation tag and rotation behaviour also get handled at this canvas stage, baking the upright pixels in so the missing rotation tag is no longer needed.
Not every conversion method treats the Exif block the same way. If keeping the exact shutter speed, lens model, and capture date matters for your workflow, you need to pick the right pipeline before you convert.
| Tag / Property | Browser Canvas (heicjpg.dev) | macOS Quick Actions | ExifTool Copy |
|---|---|---|---|
| DateTimeOriginal (Date Taken) | Dropped | Kept (unless ticked off) | Kept |
| GPSLatitude / GPSLongitude | Dropped | Kept (unless ticked off) | Kept |
| Apple MakerNotes (Live Photo ID, HDR) | Dropped | Dropped or flattened | Kept |
| EXIF Orientation tag | Baked into pixels (tag removed) | Reset to 1 (pixels rotated) | Copied (must match pixels) |
| OS File Creation Date | Set to time of download | Set to time of conversion | Restorable via command |
If you do not want to use the command line, both macOS and iOS have native conversion paths that read the HEIC item boxes and write a matching APP1 segment into the new JPG. You just have to watch out for two specific checkboxes.
Quick Actions > Convert Image. Leave Format set to JPEG. Make sure the Preserve Metadata tickbox is checked. If you untick it, macOS strips the GPS, camera model, and capture timestamp.Ctrl + S (Save As), and pick .jpg. Assuming you have the Microsoft HEIF Image Extensions installed, Windows copies the standard EXIF block over, though the file system's Date Created attribute will still change to today.If you already converted a batch of photos in your browser and want the original dates back, you do not need to re-convert them. As long as you still have the original HEIC files in a folder, you can transplant the metadata directly into the clean JPGs using Phil Harvey's ExifTool.
.heic files and your newly downloaded .jpg files in the same folder with matching filenames (for example, IMG_1042.HEIC and IMG_1042.jpg).exiftool -tagsFromFile %d%f.heic -all:all -overwrite_original -ext jpg . to copy every standard EXIF and GPS tag from each HEIC into its matching JPG.exiftool "-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal" -ext jpg . so your operating system's file explorer sorts the JPGs by the actual day the photo was taken, not the minute you downloaded them.One caveat when copying tags manually: our converter already rotates the image upright on the canvas, so if you copy the raw Orientation tag from the HEIC, some image viewers might rotate the JPG a second time. Add --Orientation to the first command to skip that single tag.
When you actually want a clean file without your home location or camera serial number attached—or you just need a quick JPG that works everywhere—drop your photos into the HEIC to JPG converter. Everything runs locally inside your browser tab, nothing is uploaded to a server, and you get standard 8-bit JPGs back in seconds.
Your photos are decoded in your own browser — open the converter and see.
First published: 23 October 2026