Apparently, HEIC can cut your storage in half without sacrificing image quality. The problem is, JPEG is much more universally compatible with the popular photo software that I use.

I'm all for saving storage space so I'm on the fence when it comes to switching the default back to JPEG, but unfortunately for me, it has turned out to be a constant workflow roadblock and annoyance since its release in iOS 11.

#!/bin/bash

# Iterate over all the .HEIC photo files
for photo in $(ls *.HEIC); do
  # Use `sips` to change the format and file extension from .HEIC to .jpg
  sips -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 70 "${photo}" --out "${photo%HEIC}jpg"
done

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Fortunately, I'm able to do the conversion from HEIC to JPEG using the `sips` command-line tool which is available from the Mac Terminal app. The Bash script above converts all of my files while setting the image quality to 70% of the original.