How to Post Live Photos on Instagram using iPhone

There’s still no easy way to post Live Photos to Instagram from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod. Here’s how you can make it happen.

While, Facebook supports Live Photos for your News Feed and Page posts, Instagram only supports Live Photos for your Instagram Stories. When creating a normal Insta post, your Live Photos only show up as still images! So let’s learn how to get Live Photos working on all our Instagram stuff.

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When the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus were released, Apple introduced a new way to view pictures with Live Photos. Apple’s Live Photos is animates 1.5 seconds of movement before and after a photo is taken on iPhone 6S or above. Even our Android friends can view Live Photos on their Android devices!

Live Photos are a different take on your normal pictures and are Apple’s version of the GIFs, but there are some limitations.

One such limitation is the fact that you can’t easily share Live Photos on Instagram. This is problematic considering just how popular Instagram currently is with more than 1 billion users.

Luckily, there is a bit of a workaround for users to be able to post Live Photos, but you will need to use Boomerang. Boomerang was released was released by Instagram back in 2015 and creates “mini-videos”.

Use Boomerang to post Live Photos on Instagram

The way that Boomerang works is fairly cut and dry, but of course, you will need to install it first. Head over to the App Store and download the app for free, before moving forward.

Rather surprisingly, Boomerang does not require you to log into the app for the first time. Instead, you can just bypass the Welcome screens, exit the app, and open Instagram.

Instead of instantly shooting a video right away, you’ll want to swipe up from the bottom. This will reveal your gallery of recent pictures, so you will need to locate the Live Photo that you want to use.

Once it has been loaded, use the 3D Touch functionality to activate Boomerang mode. This will create a Live Photo similar to what you already took.

Customize your Boomerang on Instagram

After the Boomerang has been created, you are provided with quite a few different options. In the top right-hand corner, there are options for the following:

• Stickers
• Markup
• Text

At the bottom, you can choose to Save, add it to “Your Story”, or send it to a contact of your choice. Obviously, you can just leave the photo as it is and share it, but where’s the fun in that?

Is an update coming?

Unfortunately, using Boomerang is really the only way for users to post their Live Photos to Instagram. This can be rather frustrating for some, but it is still better than not having any options at all.

Since the ability to post the Live Photo directly to Instagram has not been added yet, it’s unlikely that an update will arrive. Instead, we will have to hope that Boomerang continues to do the job for the meantime.

Conclusion

Even though the catchphrase has been overused time and time again, this just goes to show that there really is “an app for everything”. Obviously, using Boomerang to post Live Photos to Instagram is not the most ideal situation, but it still works.

If you happen to come across any new apps released which allows you to do this, please let us know in the comments below. Also, be sure to ask away if you run into any issues during the process and we’ll be more than happy to help!

Andrew Myrick

Andrew is a freelance writer based on the East Coast of the US.

He has written for a variety of sites over the years, including iMore, Android Central, Phandroid, and a few others. Now, he spends his days working for an HVAC company, while moonlighting as a freelance writer at night.