This one hack lets you post Live Photos on Instagram
One of the coolest additions to the iPhone 6S was Live Photos. The moving pictures inhabit the space between GIF and video but act more like something out of the wizarding world of Harry Potter, giving iPhone users even more of an excuse to take album upon album of pics.
- 5 min
- iPhone
Step 1: Step 1
First you have to convert your pics to Boomerangs, and you can only post Live Photos taken in the last 24 hours. To make it happen, open your Instagram app and swipe right to access your Stories.
Step 2: Step 2
Once you're there, resist the urge to share an update with your followers directly on the app. You have more pressing business here. Swipe up on the screen, and you'll be able to choose from the pictures in your camera roll from the last 24 hours.
Step 3: Step 3
Once you've selected your pic, converting it to a Boomerang is simple. All you need to do 3D Touch the screen in the exact same way you'd typically force a Live Photo into action.
Step 4: Step 4
From there, you can post the Boomerang on your Story, send it to separate followers or even save it for later to your Camera Roll. After you do that, you can post it directly to your IG, just like any other Boomerang.
While social networks like Facebook, Tumblr and Google Photos supported the animated snapshots shortly after launch, photo-centric Instagram still hasn't added direct functionality well over a year afterward. We've been given plenty of new features in the meantime – some good like Snapchat-cloned Stories, some bad like photo albums – but we still can't share Live Photos.
There is a workaround, though – you'll just have to be okay with converting your pics to Boomerangs to be able to post them. We don't have true Live Photo functionality, which might have something to do with the reliance on Apple's 3D Touch to activate them, but at least your best shots can still be shared somehow.
Shortcut through your Stories
The direct path to getting your Live Photos up on IG is to post them to your Story. It's easy – but there are a few limits to your sharing. First you have to convert your pics to Boomerangs, and you can only post Live Photos taken in the last 24 hours.
To make it happen, open your Instagram app and swipe right to access your Stories.
Once you're there, resist the urge to share an update with your followers directly on the app. You have more pressing business here. Swipe up on the screen, and you'll be able to choose from the pictures in your camera roll from the last 24 hours.
Once you've selected your pic, converting it to a Boomerang is simple. All you need to do 3D Touch the screen in the exact same way you'd typically force a Live Photo into action.
From there, you can post the Boomerang on your Story, send it to separate followers or even save it for later to your Camera Roll. After you do that, you can post it directly to your IG, just like any other Boomerang.
Can you convert to video?
I've seen other guides that claim you can use secondary apps to convert your Live Photos to videos to post on IG, but there's a major issue with that method: Instagram only allows you to post video content longer than three seconds. Live Photos are made by capturing the 1.5 seconds before and after you take the pic. That means the newly-converted videos wind up right under that three second limit.
I wanted to test a few of the apps to be sure, so I gave Lively and LP Converter a shot. They converted the Live Photos, just as advertised -- but none of the videos could be uploaded to Instagram.
For now, it looks like the only way to get some semblance of a Live Photo up on IG is through Boomerang. We can still hold out hope that they'll make it onto your newsfeed someday, though – so Instagram, next time you decide to add a feature that could cause your own untimely demise, maybe give us some Live Photos along with it.
Brett Williams is a Tech Reporter at Mashable. He writes about tech news, trends and other tangentially related topics with a particular interest in wearables and exercise tech. Prior to Mashable, he wrote for Inked Magazine and Thrillist. Brett's work has also appeared on Fusion and AskMen, to name a few. You can follow Brett on Twitter @bdwilliams910.
