Instagram enthusiasts will be pleased to know that there is finally a way to post your Live Photos on the service.
The animated images were supported by Facebook, Tumblr, and Google after the feature was launched on the iPhone 6S, but it’s taken Instagram a year to catch on.
But where there’s an Insta-will, there’s a way—so long as you’re willing to convert your pictures to Boomerangs before posting them. This neat little trick, discovered by Mashable, gets you around sharing problems with your Live Photos.
The easiest way is sharing Live Photos on your Story after converting them to Boomerangs. However, you’ll only be able to do this with Live Photos taken in the past 24 hours.
First, open the Instagram app and swipe right to access Stories. Then swipe up on the screen to choose from the pictures in your camera roll taken within the 24-hour bracket. 3D Touch the screen to convert the picture to a Boomerang and post it to your Story, share with friends, or add to your camera roll. Once it’s in your camera roll, you can then post it directly to Instagram.
The Boomerang effect changes the Live Photos (Boomerangs are only 1 second long, instead of the Live Photos’ 1.5 seconds), but at least this way you’ll be able to share your best Live Photos with the Instagram world.
There are a few other ways to turn Live Photos to Instagram videos via secondary apps. Mashable’s Brett Williams tested out a few of these options, but the big problem with this option is the length of the Live Photo.
Instagram only allows users to upload videos longer than 3 seconds, but Live Photos only capture the 1.5 seconds before and after a photo is taken. That means that even when you’re able to convert them, you won’t be able to upload them.
You could also use something like Google’s Motion Stills to turn multiple Live Photos into a video compilation, then upload that to Instagram.
Otherwise, it looks like Boomerang is the only method of sharing Live Photos on IG for now.
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