Resize and Convert Images With Shortcuts on Mac

1. Open Shortcuts and click the plus button to make a new shortcut. Name it something like “Resize to 1600”.
2. Open the shortcut’s details and turn on Use as Quick Action, then tick Finder. Set it to receive Images (and Files if you want).
3. Add the Resize Image action. It takes the images passed in from Finder. Set the size by width, height or percentage.
4. Add Convert Image if you want a different format, such as JPEG or PNG. Lossy formats have a quality setting.
5. Add Save File at the end, or the shortcut returns the images to nowhere. Choose a destination folder and turn off the prompt to ask each time.

Select images in Finder, right-click, and look under Quick Actions for your shortcut. Menu labels shift a little between macOS versions. We built this from Apple’s Shortcuts documentation and have not timed it.

Use the same pattern with Convert Image as the middle step and Save File at the end. Pick the target format in the action. HEIC to JPEG is the most common use: iPhone photos that a website or Windows PC will not open. For a plain walkthrough without Shortcuts, see HEIC to JPG on a Mac.

Shortcuts offers the common formats, not everything. Newer web formats such as AVIF are not what this action is for. For those, use a converter; the best image converter for Mac compares options.

Yes. macOS ships a

shortcuts

shortcuts list
shortcuts run "Resize to 1600" --input-path photo.jpg

shortcuts list

It resizes and converts, but it does not compress with any judgment. The same quality value applies to every file, so a screenshot and a 12-megapixel photo get the same treatment. There is no “get this under a size” option.

Also check if the chain keeps metadata. Photos carry location and camera data unless something removes it. Our guide to whether compressing removes metadata explains what to check before you share.

If your older Automator workflow still works, the Automator version is the same idea with a different editor.

If you resize a few images to one fixed width and save them as JPEG or PNG, a Shortcuts Quick Action is enough, and it costs nothing. Preview’s Tools > Adjust Size handles one-off jobs.

Smol earns $29 when you want a real quality setting, output as AVIF, WebP or HEIC, a mixed folder of images, PDFs and video in one batch, or watched folders. It has its own Finder Quick Action, installed from the app (how that works), and everything stays on your Mac. One note: by default Smol fits images inside 2000 × 2000 px, so raise that if you print. See pricing.