What Are iPhone Live Photos and How to Use Them

Live Photos is an iPhone camera feature that captures a short moment of motion along with every photo — 1.5 seconds before and after the shutter tap. The result is a photo that comes alive when you press and hold on it, showing brief motion and the sounds of the moment.

You've probably seen these in your Photos app — when you press and hold on a photo and it moves slightly, that's a Live Photo. Every Live Photo is both a still image and a micro-video. When you share it as a regular photo, people see the still. When viewed in the Photos app on an Apple device, pressing and holding reveals the motion.

Live Photos are turned on by default on iPhones (look for the two concentric circles icon in the Camera app — it's yellow when enabled, white with a slash when disabled). You can turn them on or off per shot.

What makes Live Photos useful: they capture a more honest memory than a posed still. The motion before and after the shutter shows what was actually happening — a child about to laugh, a dog shaking off water, a wave rolling in. They're also great for capturing moments where timing is tricky, because you get a small buffer of before-and-after.

There are also fun effects in the Photos app: Long Exposure blurs any motion in a Live Photo to create a silky waterfall or light-trail effect. Loop plays the Live Photo in a continuous loop. Bounce plays it forward and backward. These can turn ordinary Live Photos into interesting visual effects.

Live Photos take slightly more storage space than regular photos because they include the video component. If storage is limited, you can turn off Live Photos in Camera settings.