Apple debuts Live Photos API, allows for playback on most popular browsers

Apple has developed a JavaScript API for its Live Photos, allowing pictures taken with the iOS feature to be shared on the web.

The JavaScript API presents the player in a DOM element, which can be configured with photo and video resources. Playback is controlled either with a custom in-app interface or by provided UI elements.

Adoption is relatively simple, with web developers needing to embed LivePhotosKit JS in the webpage, and enable JavaScript strict mode. The Live Photo is passed to the browser as a single JPG and a MOV file.

The kit is compatible with Safari, Chrome, and Firefox on macOS. Windows users using Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Internet Explorer 11 can view the embedded live photos as well.

Live Photos were introduced with the iPhone 6s, and works with iOS 9 and newer. Apple's introduction of iOS 9.1 refined the capture algorithm somewhat.

A phone in Live Photo mode is essentially constant capturing images. When the shutter button is pressed, the camera saves the previous 1.5 seconds, and the follow-on 1.5 seconds. The iPhone then takes the series of photos and animates them into a mini-movie. The Live Photo is stored along with the original photo, but is compressed so it only takes between two and three times the size of one still.

6 Comments

Soli 9981 comments · 9 Years

About 7 years ago

The Verge incorrectly referred to them as GIFs. I'd think that Live Photos not being the GIF file format was obvious.

Eric_WVGG 969 comments · 8 Years

Am I the only person who finds Live-by-default in the Camera app to be absolutely infuriating? I've taken countless, carefully composed photos that wind up looking like drunken stumbles because of this stupid feature.

(yes, I go back, edit, and save as a still after the fact, but it's time consuming and frustrating)

Eric_WVGG said:

Am I the only person who finds Live-by-default in the Camera app to be absolutely infuriating? I've taken countless, carefully composed photos that wind up looking like drunken stumbles because of this stupid feature.

(yes, I go back, edit, and save as a still after the fact, but it's time consuming and frustrating)

Why not just disable Live Photos instead of re-saving every photo as a basic JPEG?

manfred zorn 28 comments · 10 Years

Eric_WVGG said:

Am I the only person who finds Live-by-default in the Camera app to be absolutely infuriating? I've taken countless, carefully composed photos that wind up looking like drunken stumbles because of this stupid feature.

(yes, I go back, edit, and save as a still after the fact, but it's time consuming and frustrating)

You can easily turn it off before you take the photo (and it stays off for repeated launches of the Camera).

bestkeptsecret 4285 comments · 13 Years

Eric_WVGG said:

Am I the only person who finds Live-by-default in the Camera app to be absolutely infuriating? I've taken countless, carefully composed photos that wind up looking like drunken stumbles because of this stupid feature.

(yes, I go back, edit, and save as a still after the fact, but it's time consuming and frustrating)

I just took a could of snaps before I turned it off. It doesn't make sense for you to keep putting off turning off the feature countless times when you are taking so many carefully composed shots.

On the other hand, last week I actually checked out a few live photos I had taken almost a year ago and it really did bring back great memories. It works as advertised!