What Are iPhone Live Photos and How to Use Them
Live Photos capture a moment in motion — 1.5 seconds before and after the shutter click. Here's how they work and what you can do with them.
4 min read · 5 steps · Checked April 2026
Step 1. Take a Live Photo
Open the Camera app. The Live Photos button is at the top center. It looks like two concentric circles. When it's yellow, Live Photos is on. When it shows a slash through it, it's off. Tap the button to toggle. Take photos normally — Live Photos doesn't change how you shoot.
Quick Tip
Live Photos work best when there's motion in the scene and you hold the phone still for a moment after tapping the shutter. The 1.5 seconds of "before" motion shows what was happening right before you tapped.
Step 2. View a Live Photo
Open the Photos app and find a Live Photo (they have a small "LIVE" badge in the corner in the Photos grid). Open the photo. Press and hold on the screen — the photo comes to life with motion and plays the captured audio. Release to pause it as a still.
Step 3. Apply a Live Photo Effect
Open a Live Photo. Swipe up on the photo to reveal "LIVE" effects at the bottom. Choose: "Loop" (repeats the motion in a continuous loop), "Bounce" (plays forward then backward), or "Long Exposure" (blurs any motion to create artistic effects like smooth water or light trails). Tap one to apply it. The effect is saved alongside the original.
Quick Tip
Long Exposure works best on photos taken on a stable surface (or tripod) with moving subjects like water, traffic lights at night, or people walking. Handheld Long Exposure often looks blurry in an unintentional way.
Step 4. Set a Live Photo as Your Lock Screen
Long-press the lock screen → "Customize" → "Photo." Select a Live Photo. Set it as your lock screen. When you raise or tap your phone, the lock screen briefly animates the Live Photo. It's subtle and personalized.
Step 5. Share a Live Photo (and What Happens)
When you share a Live Photo via Messages to another iPhone user, they see the motion when they press and hold. When shared via email or to non-Apple devices, only the still image is sent. If you want to share the motion video: open the Live Photo → tap the share icon → "Save as Video." This creates a standard video file you can send anywhere.
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.
Official sources
- Apple Support — support.apple.com
- iPhone User Guide — support.apple.com
- AppleCare contact options — support.apple.com
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