How to post Google Photos' awesome animations to Instagram

If you use Google Photos, you know the service is so much more than just the best way to store and back up all your photos and videos into the cloud.

Using advanced machine learning, Google Photos can intelligently identify people, places, and things -- and it's all easily searchable. One of the cooler things in Google Photos is the Assistant (not to be confused with Google's other Assistant on Android and Google Home).

In the Google Photos app on iOS and Android, the Assistant is a card-based panel that does three things:

1. Shows you the status of your backup.

2. Automatically creates "movies" based on related video clips.

3. Creates "animations" using batches of bursted photos. (You can also create your own animations by manually selecting between 2-50 photos, but the end result is the same -- you still get a GIF file.)

I'm constantly amazed by how great the automatically generated animations are, and it sure beats using a separate app like Burstio to convert your burst photos into a video or a GIF.

There's just one little thing: While you can download and share the animated GIFs online to Twitter, Giphy or wherever using a computer, sharing GIFs natively to Instagram is still impossible without first converting the file into a video.

Here's how to do that quickly and easily:

For iOS

On iOS, you'll need to use another app like GifLab (free) to convert the GIF into a video. To find your animations, type "animations" into the Photos search bar in the iOS or Android app. Then, select your animation. (These are animations you've saved. Animations that Google Photos created but you didn't save within 30 days of their creation will not appear and are lost forever, so save them when they're created.)

Tap the "•••" located in the upper right corner and then tap "Download" to save the GIF. Then, open up GifLab and do the following:

Step 1: Open GifLab and select "GIF to Instagram."

Step 2: Select your GIF and adjust the playback speed.

Step 3: Tap "Save and share on Instagram."

For Android

On Android, things are even easier and you can share GIFs directly from Google Photos to Instagram, as the app automatically converts the GIF into a video, no extra app required.

Select your Google Photos animation GIF as outlined above and then tap the share icon in the lower left. Select Instagram as the app (obviously, have it installed and logged in) to share the GIF. Once the GIF's been auto converted into a video, you'll be taken Instagram where you can select a filter and add a caption.