
If you’re a longtime iPhone user, you’ve probably run into this issue once or twice: error messages trying to upload it somewhere or viewing it on a Windows PC. The most likely culprit: Your photo was saved as an HEIC file, Apple’s own image format, that is not JPEG.
Apple committed to HEIC back in 2017 with iOS 11 as a way to save storage space as the iPhone camera system improved. Compatibility has improved in the past few years, but the file type still isn’t widely used — JPEG is still the most popular image format.