The Best Image Converter for Mac: 6 Free and Paid Options (2026)

Smol converts images to JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, HEIC, TIFF, BMP, GIF and PDF. Drop files or whole folders on the window, mixed types included, choose the output format and watch per-file progress. It runs on your Mac, with no upload and no account, and writes a copy next to each original by default. A Finder Quick Action, presets and watched folders cover the jobs you repeat.

Where it earns the top slot is the format that macOS cannot write at all: WebP. Preview and sips read it but do not make it (see our PNG to WebP guide), and Smol does. On AVIF there is measured data: in our benchmark of 24 small Kodak photographs, at the same SSIMULACRA2 quality score Smol’s AVIF needed 15 to 21% fewer bytes than Apple’s built-in AVIF encoder and 22 to 26% fewer than the best JPEG. Those are small 768 × 512 film scans, so treat the percentages as a direction, not a promise for your camera files.

Limits, plainly. Mac only (macOS 13 or later on Apple Silicon, 14 or later on Intel). It is not the fastest: 24 small images take about 7 seconds, and a sips loop does the same work in under one. There is no lossless mode, no SVG or JPEG XL output and no AVI output. Converting to JPG ignores the quality slider and writes a large, high-quality file, so for a small JPG use Compress with the output format set to JPG. PDF to image converts the first page only. There is no free trial and purchases are not refundable, so try the browser demo on the homepage first.

Solo is $29 once for one Mac, Team is $49 for three, with free updates and no subscription. The full format list is in every format Smol converts.

XnConvert’s Mac App Store listing calls it “the free batch image converter for macOS”: free, with no subscription, no in-app purchases and no account. It lists “500+ formats in, 80+ out,” and names AVIF, WebP, HEIC and TIFF, including multipage TIFF. Nothing is uploaded, and the listing states that the developer collects no data.

The real strength is the pipeline. You stack actions (convert, resize by pixels, percentage or fit, crop, rotate, watermark, rename with patterns) and apply them to a whole folder, then save the set to reuse. It also reads and writes IPTC and XMP and lets you strip or keep EXIF. If your job is “convert 300 photos, shrink them, rename them,” this is the best free answer on the Mac, and Smol does not do watermarks or pattern renaming.

The tradeoffs are about interface and scope. It has many panels to learn, and it is an image tool: the listing mentions no PDF, video or audio handling. It requires macOS 10.12 or later, so old Macs are covered. Pick it when the price must be zero and you are willing to learn the panels.

Apple’s own guide says to open the image, choose File > Export and pick a format. The Format menu lists HEIC, JPEG, JPEG-2000, OpenEXR, PDF, PNG and TIFF. Holding Option while you click the menu reveals specialized or older formats. JPEG and JPEG-2000 offer a quality control, and the files never leave your Mac.

For several images, Apple’s instructions are to open them in one window, select them in the sidebar and follow the same steps. It works, but it is a manual, one-window affair, and Apple does not describe it as a folder-level batch tool. Check the exported files before you delete anything.

The gap that matters for this query: AVIF is not in the list Apple documents, and Preview cannot write WebP, a limit our WebP guide found on macOS 27. If your target is JPEG, PNG, HEIC or TIFF and you convert a few files a month, stop here and keep your money. The steps are in the section below.

sips lives at /usr/bin/sips on every Mac. The basic call is sips -s format jpeg in.png --out out.jpg, and it is fast to script into a loop or a Shortcuts action. In our sips guide, run on macOS 27.0 (26 September 2026), it read and wrote JPEG, PNG, TIFF, HEIC and AVIF, and read WebP without being able to write it: asking for WebP output failed with error 13 and wrote no file.

It is single-threaded, so a folder takes a while unless you run several processes. It also keeps metadata such as GPS through a conversion in our sips guide, which matters if you convert before sharing. Run sips --formats to see what your macOS version can read and write.

Choose it if you are comfortable in Terminal and need JPEG, PNG, TIFF, HEIC or AVIF. Skip it if you need WebP out or a window to drag files into.

ImageMagick’s format list shows AVIF, HEIC, WebP, TIFF, JPEG and PNG all as read and write, with the note that HEIC, WebP and TIFF depend on delegate libraries (libheif, the WebP library and libtiff). Its download page recommends brew install imagemagick on macOS and lists release 7.1.2-34. A typical call is magick in.png out.webp, and mogrify handles a folder.

It is the most flexible tool here: resizing, color handling, cropping and compositing sit behind one command, and it runs on Linux servers as well as your Mac. It is also the least friendly. You need Homebrew and Terminal, the quality options are many, and some formats depend on delegate libraries, so check the install supports the one you need.

Pick it if you already live in Terminal or need the same conversion in CI. If you want a window and a drop zone, take XnConvert or Smol.

CloudConvert’s image page lists AVIF, HEIC, HEIF, TIFF and WebP along with BMP, GIF, ICO, PSD and RAW. Its pricing page shows a free tier of 10 conversion credits a day with a 1 GB file limit and five concurrent tasks, plus paid credit packages and monthly subscriptions. It works from any browser, on any OS.

The limit is the model. It converts files online, so you send it a copy of each one. That makes it a poor fit for client photos, ID scans or anything under an NDA unless you have read its privacy policy, and a folder of 500 photos means 500 uploads against a daily credit count.

Use it for a one-off conversion to an unusual format. For local alternatives, see CloudConvert alternatives that work offline.