The other day while sharing photos with a friend, I noticed as she scrolled through her Camera Roll that her Live Photos came alive as she swiped for just a 1/2 second or so. Upon testing my own, I found my own Live Photo previews not working. Even though I knew this was a feature, I never realized mine wasn’t working until that moment, but now it bothered me. Luckily, I was able to find a solution fairly easily.
I started out where I normally do when I have these kinds of problems. In this case, that meant I paid the Photos & Camera section a visit in Settings. After seeing there was no physical toggle or option for these small previews, I figured it had to be a Settings difference somewhere.
So I started going through the Settings app on her phone, my own, and my girlfriends (her Live Photo previews weren’t working either). This is when I came across a setting that was different on our iPhones compared to my friend’s.
If you find Live Photo previews not working, you most likely need to turn off the Reduce Motion feature.
Myself, like many others, don’t like the parallax effect that iOS 7 brought with it. For this reason, I’ve always used the Reduce Motion feature to counteract it. Unfortunately, that also seems to turn off the ability to view Live Photo previews correctly. If you want them back, you’ll have to turn off the Reduce Motion feature:
- Launch the Settings app.
- Tap on General.
- Choose Accessibility.
- Choose the option for Reduce Motion and turn it Off.
You should now be able to view Live Photo previews.
One other thing I noticed was that my friend’s phone showed the small circle on the thumbnail views if a photo was a Live Photo. For some reason, my iPhone does not show this. No idea why, and I haven’t been able to figure that one out.
If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them!
For some reason the small circle icon doesn’t show on the Live Photos preview. It does on my Mac though, just not on my 6S Plus. Did a reboot, toggled OFF/ON reduce motion, no difference.
Yep, I have this exact same issue (noted at the bottom of this article). I fixed the preview motion issue, but I can’t get that stupid circle to come back. After looking at a few people’s phones, some have it and some don’t, and there is no consistency across iOS version, etc.. I don’t get it.
I thought my iphone is damaged. Thanks to your article i was able to fix it. Again thank you so much.
You’re very welcome.
For me after upgrading to 9.2.1 it was my “touch ” settings that was disabled (accessibility –>touch accommodations)
If you’re not taking Live Photo images, You have to click on the Live Photo icon (it turns yellow) before you take the photo. The icon is in the middle of the top tool bar. It is 3 circles, with the outermost one being dotted.
This is only true for the iPhone S I have an iPhone 6 Plus. It doesn’t have the Live feature as an option ?
I have a iPhone 6+ and l do not have an option for live photo why???
Yup! Had exactly the same issue with my iPhone I thought I needed to update my iOS but that wasn’t the case. There is only a few reasons why live photo may not work or has stopped working .
1. Either you are using a iPhone 6 (as it only works for 6s and 6plus)
2. If it is a 6s or plus maybe you haven’t switched on the circle button in the middle of your camera which normally turns yellow once u press it.
3. Lastly go to settings on your iPhone, then general followed by accessibility then turn off your reduced motion .
If you have tried all of this and still nothing then you may need to visit your nearest apple store to report it as it could just be an error from the iPhone itself . Hope this helps guys
It didn’t work, i have a 4 though
My iphone 6s live photos dont work everytime i touched the taken photo. But everytime i open it on my gallery it moves instantly without touching the screen. How can i resolve this please. Thank you so much
I did all of your steps and it still doesn’t work. Why?
I have a 7+ and some earlier Live Photos I took don’t play but the recent ones do. I’ve tried all your steps and I still don’t see any change
I did all the fixes suggested and when it wouldn’t play I just pressed harder on the screen. If I do that it works. The old kick it and giddy up theory.
Turning off Reduced Motion worked for me; I can see a bit of initial motion on photos that come from a sender that has the feature, though I can’t take Live photos with my older phone.
Turned off Reduced Motion and they work fine. Thanks.
I tried to figure out why mine weren’t working properly and I found out that I just wasn’t pressing hard enough on my screen. iPhone 8 Plus.
Nobody explained anything about the Apple products (since they have stopped making tutorials as they are too busy making money to bother themselves teaching us how to better use their products and that Steve Jobs had considered teaching users to be an essential part of Apple) EVER like you did, Thank you very much Allyson!
But when I checked Reduced motion, i saw mine was OFF. I have had iPhone 7 for some over a year and LIVE pics were working , no problem, either on me iPhone, or on my Mac computers. For the last couple of month the pics come out LIVE only on the iPhone, though have become much shorter, like 1 sec long but when exported to my computers, they look like stills. Those taken earlier are still working fine. I am so upset 😩