Easily convert Live Photos into GIFs in iOS 11 [Quick Tips]

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iPhone X Live Photos

Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

Live Photos are great. They can capture special moments in a way that some pictures just can’t. The little movie clips that play when you force-touch a Live Photo can show the joy or wonder of the image. But therein lies the problem. They’re basically video clips embedded into photos, which makes sharing them to non-iOS users a nightmare.

A plethora of apps can convert Live Photos into GIFs or a standard video clip, but iOS 11 makes it even easier. Check out our video below to see how to quickly convert a Live Photo into a GIF.

Facebook and other social networks have been slow to adopt Apple’s proprietary Live Photos format. Luckily, sharing them with Android friends has never been easier.

How to convert Live Photos into GIFs

Firstly, find the Live Photo you want to convert into a GIF. On your iPhone or iPad, open the Photos app. Then either swipe through your library and look for the Live Photo icon at the top left, or go into Albums and find the Live Photos folder.

Once you’ve decided on a photo that will work for your GIF, swipe up to reveal the animation options (labeled Effects). Then choose one of the animation options that works best for your photo (choose from Live, Loop, Bounce or Long Exposure).

Swipe back down to save your changes. You can go back at any time to change the animation style.

The photo will then be duplicated into another album called Animated. Once it’s in there, the Live Photo has been converted into a GIF and can be shared with Android users or on Facebook, etc.

If you then want to post the image to Instagram, you’ll need to convert the GIF into a video using one of the aforementioned third-party apps. But don’t worry — we’ve got a video for that, too:

Hopefully, you’ll find this tip useful. If you do, subscribe to the Cult of Mac YouTube channel to keep up-to-date on all our latest videos.

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