Rental applications usually ask for a bundle of documents: ID photos, pay slips, bank statements, and photos of your current home. On an iPhone, those photos are saved as HEIC by default — and many rental portals only accept JPG or PDF uploads. The result is a familiar frustration: the form rejects a perfectly good photo with a vague "invalid file type" message, right when you are racing another applicant for the same flat.

Why the portal rejects your iPhone photos

HEIC is efficient, but it is still not universally supported by web upload forms. A rental portal built around JPG and PDF uploads may not recognise HEIC at all, even though the photo looks fine on your phone. Renaming the file from .heic to .jpg does not fix it either: the contents are still HEIC data, so the portal will still reject it — or worse, accept it and show a broken preview to the letting agent.

Bundle the photos into one PDF

For a rental application, PDF is usually the better choice than sending a dozen loose JPGs. One PDF keeps your ID photo, proof of income, and home photos in a single file, in the order you choose, and it prints cleanly if the agent needs a paper copy. Put the most important page first — typically your ID — then the supporting photos, and check the page order before you upload.

Convert in the browser, without uploading anything

If you need to convert HEIC photos to PDF for rental applications, you can do it entirely in your browser: select the photos, convert them on your own device, and download the PDF. Nothing is uploaded to a server, no account is needed, and your ID photos never leave your phone or computer. Then open the PDF once before submitting — confirm every page is the right way up, nothing is cropped, and the text on your documents is still legible.

A quick checklist before you hit submit

  • Convert a copy, and keep the HEIC originals in case the agent asks for a clearer photo later.
  • Check the file size: if the portal caps uploads at a few megabytes, a compressed PDF is safer than a folder of full-resolution photos.
  • Preview the whole PDF, page by page, not just the first page.
  • Name the file clearly, for example "Rental-Application-YourName.pdf", so the agent can find it later.

A rejected upload is rarely about the photo itself — it is about the format. Convert first, bundle into one PDF, preview it, and your application goes in on the first try.

Disclosure: I'm the developer of FileOnTap.