Facebook Adds Support For Apple iPhone 6s Live Photos

Although many shrugged off Live Photos as a superfluous addition to the iPhone 6s, the small video clips are starting to gain some traction. If you need a refresher, Live Photos capture 1.5 seconds of video footage before you hit the camera shutter button and 1.5 seconds after, giving you a 3-second 960x720 video that is stored with the original 12MP image you captured.

“A still photo captures an instant frozen in time,” says Apple when describing the feature. “With Live Photos, you can turn those instants into unforgettable living memories.”

Just last week, Tumblr added support for Live Photos, and today, Facebook is joining the fray with support baked right into the latest incarnation of its iOS app. iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus users will be able to access their Live Photos directly from their Camera Roll and upload them to Facebook. Any Facebook user with an iPhone or iPad running iOS 9 will be able to playback a Live Photo (denoted by the circular “Live Photo” icon in the bottom right hand corner of the image) from their News Feed or directly from anyone’s profile page.

There are a few caveats, however, to Live Photos support with Facebook. For starters, the ability to actually uploaded Live Photos is not yet enabled for all Facebook users, and is being rolled out in a staggered fashion. Secondly, unless you have an iPhone or iPad, you won’t be able to playback Live Photos — Apple just isn’t ready to spread the love to competing platforms at this time. In fact, the ability to view Live Photos on Facebook hasn’t even been extended to Mac users at this point.

Facebook and Tumblr are prime destinations for mobile users when it comes to stashing their images, so we wonder how long it will take for other photo destinations like Twitter and Instagram to join in on the Live Photos bandwagon.