By now, Live Photos are an iPhone staple. And not only can you relive a little of the action occurring in your still photo, you can also turn Live Photos into Boomerangs for Instagram, or even looping GIFs and long-exposure shots. But there’s one more thing you can do with Live Photos you might not know about—convert them into videos.
You might have stumbled upon this functionality before if you snapped a series of several Live Photos in a row. When you hold down on the first one in the series in the Photos app, Photos will “stitch” them all together, effectively turning the photos into a video. However, this feature goes beyond a simple trick in the Photos app—you can actually export a series of Live Photos as a standalone, sharable video.
How to turn Live Photos into videos on your iPhone
To start, open the Photos app on your iPhone. Tap the Albums tab, scroll down and open the Live Photos album. Tap the Select button in the top-right corner and choose all the photos you want to stitch into a video.
Once selected, long-press any of these photos, or tap the ellipsis menu icon. You’ll see a popover menu where you can select Save as Video. Your iPhone will combine and export all these photos into a new video and save it to the Photos app.
This tip works well when you’ve selected photos that were taken at the same time, such as multiple photos of people at a party, a sporting event, or another activity. While you can combine random Live Photos into a video, when they’re taken in sequence, the stitched video looks seamless.