Manatee

How to turn a Live Photo into a GIF on a Mac

· 6 min read

A Live Photo is really two files sharing one name: a still image and a short video of the moments around the shutter press. To make a GIF on a Mac, get that video out of Photos as its own MOV file, then convert the MOV to GIF. The first step is the one people miss, because dragging a Live Photo out of Photos usually gives you only the still.

Get the video half out of Photos

  1. Open Photos and select the Live Photo. Live Photos show a LIVE badge in the corner when you open them.
  2. Choose File, Export, then Export Unmodified Original.
  3. Leave the options as they are and click Export, then choose a folder.

You get two files with the same name, such as IMG_4821.HEIC and IMG_4821.MOV. The MOV is the motion, and it is what you will turn into a GIF. If your iPhone’s camera is set to Most Compatible, the still is a JPEG instead of a HEIC; the MOV is the same either way.

“Unmodified” means exactly that: any edits you made in Photos, such as a crop or a filter, are not included in the exported video. If the crop matters, redo it on the MOV before converting, as below.

If the photo reached your Mac some other way, for example as an attachment, check whether a MOV came with it. Many sharing routes send only the still, and then the motion is not on the Mac at all. Send it again from the iPhone, or export it from Photos on a Mac signed in to the same iCloud library.

Trim and scale first

A Live Photo’s video is a few seconds long, and a GIF of all of it is often bigger than it needs to be. Two quick edits in QuickTime Player make a large difference:

  1. Open the MOV in QuickTime Player and choose Edit, Trim. Drag the yellow handles to keep only the best part, often a second or two, and click Trim.
  2. Choose File, Export As, and pick the lowest resolution that will look right where the GIF is going. For a chat or a web page, a smaller size is usually plenty.

The export writes a new MOV and leaves the original alone. Why a GIF is bigger than the video it came from explains why these two steps matter so much.

Convert the MOV to a GIF

With Manatee

Manatee converts the MOV in one drop. Open it, choose Convert, drag the MOV into the window or onto the menu bar icon, and pick GIF from the list of targets. It writes the GIF as a new file beside the video and never modifies the source. Everything happens on the Mac with no upload, which is worth something when the clip is of your family or your home.

Manatee is not a video editor, so it will not trim, crop, add text or change the speed. Do those things in QuickTime Player first, as above. It is free for 24 hours with every feature, then $9 once.

With Shortcuts or Terminal

The Shortcuts app includes a Make GIF action, and command-line tools in Terminal give you full control over frame rate and dimensions. How to convert a video to GIF on a Mac walks through both, and the same steps work on a Live Photo’s MOV.

Keep the GIF a sensible size

GIF is an old format. Each frame is stored as a complete image limited to 256 colors, with nothing like the frame-to-frame compression a modern video uses. A few seconds of GIF can easily be many times the size of the MOV it came from. To keep it in check:

  • Keep it short. A GIF that loops a single second often reads better than one that shows the whole clip.
  • Keep it small. Halving the width and height cuts the pixel count to a quarter.
  • Pick steady clips. A handheld shot where every pixel shifts every frame produces a much larger GIF than one where only the subject moves.
  • Accept the jump. A Live Photo was not recorded to loop, so the GIF will usually jump from the last frame back to the first. The Loop and Bounce effects on the iPhone are playback effects in Photos; converting the plain MOV gives you the plain forward clip.

Do you need a GIF at all?

Many places that show GIFs also play short videos automatically, and a video is far smaller and keeps the full range of color. If the destination accepts video, convert the MOV to MP4 instead, or send the MOV as it is. Use a GIF when the destination insists on one, or when it must play everywhere with no play button. Which format should you convert a video to helps with that choice.

A privacy note

The MOV half of a Live Photo carries its own metadata, which can include the location where it was taken. If you share the MOV or the still as well as the GIF, strip the location first. Removing GPS location from photos before sharing covers the still, and removing metadata from a video covers the MOV. Manatee’s Clean mode strips GPS and camera details from both.

Questions

Can I make GIFs from several Live Photos at once? Yes. Select them all in Photos and use Export Unmodified Originals, then drop all the MOVs into Manatee with GIF as the target. Each becomes its own GIF. Combining several clips into one GIF needs a video editor first.

Why does my GIF look speckled or banded? Because each frame is limited to 256 colors. Skies, skin and soft shadows have more shades than that, so the converter approximates them with patterns of dots. A video file does not have this limit, which is one more reason to send MP4 when you can.

I only have the still. Can I make a GIF from it? Not a moving one. The motion lives in the MOV, and if that never reached your Mac, go back to the iPhone or to Photos on a Mac that syncs the same library.