Apple introduced Live Photos feature with iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, and the feature is present in the latest iPhones as well. The Live Photos feature, as you know, is a mixture of movie and still image. That is, a Live Photo is neither a photo nor a video.
When you capture a Live Photo on your iPhone, the iOS creates a MOV file as well as a JPEG file.
If you’re running Windows 10, Windows 8.1, or Windows 7 and want to view Live Photos on your PC, you have a couple of options.
You need to either play the MOV video file using a media player, convert Live Photos to GIF images first on your iPhone and transfer them to your PC to view them, or transfer Live Photos to your PC and then convert to GIF to view Live Photos on your Windows 10 PC before viewing them.
For those who are wondering, a GIF image will look similar to a Live Photo, but the clarity of the picture might not be as good as the original Live Photo.
The following are the four ways to view Apple iPhone’s Live Photos on Windows 10 and earlier versions of Windows.
View iPhone Live Photos on Windows 10 without additional software
As said before, the iPhone creates a MOV file as well as a JPEG image when you capture a Live Photo. The easiest way to view your Live Photos on your Windows 10 PC is to transfer these MOV files (connect your iPhone to PC > open File Explorer > iPhone > Internet storage > DCIM) to your PC and then double-click on a video file to play it using the default Films & TV app. We recommend using a video player that automatically plays all the videos in a folder (GOM player does this best) to quickly play all MOV files.
Convert Live Photos to GIF on iPhone to view them on Windows 10
There are dozens of apps out there to help convert Live Photos to GIF images. The only problem with these GIF converting apps on iPhone is that most of them are either paid or support a limited number of photos at a time. And very few free apps that support unlimited Live Photos add a watermark while converting a Live Photo to GIF. We tried Lively app, but with default settings, the image quality of GIF was not up to the mark, as you can see in the picture below.
So we suggest you search the store and install either a paid or free app depending on your needs.
After converting Live Photos to GIF files, transfer them to your Windows 10 PC to view them in the default Photos app or Windows Photo Viewer.
Convert Live Photos to GIF on Windows 10/8/7 to view them
Quite a few free utilities are around to convert videos to GIF files. Any GIF Animator, Free Video to GIF Converter, and Freemore Video to GIF Converter are some of the popular programs in this space. We used Any GIF Animator to convert Live Photos to GIF and were quite happy with the end result.
Like most other programs, Any GIF Converter also allows you to select frame rate, GIF size (in pixels), and dither method. We suggest you play with these settings to get the best quality and size GIFs to view on your PC.
Convert Live Photos to GIF online to view them on Windows 10
Those of you who want to view iPhone Live Photos on Windows 10 PC without installing any additional program can use an online converter to convert Live Photos to GIF. Like programs, a bunch of free video to GIF converter services available. We used Make A Gif web service to convert one of our Live Photos to GIF.
I hope this helps!
