How To Convert Live Photos Into Still Pictures On Your iPhone
3D Touch and improved hardware weren’t the only new things that came with the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. Apart from the new software capabilities tied in with the pressure-sensitive touchscreen, Apple’s latest smartphone duo came with a new, exclusive way to capture moments called Live Photos.
The “Live” mode can be turned on or off to capture a few moments before and after each snap, creating a 3-second video that is attached to the photo. These Live Photos can then be brought to life by hard-pressing them within the Photos app. While this sounds like the thing you’d like to keep on most of the time, you have to consider the extra space each Live Photo will be taking. At twice the space of a regular photo, Live Photos are bound to fill up your iPhone’s storage pretty quick over a few albums, especially if you’re toting the 16 GB base model.
You could, of course, always turn off Live Photos within the Camera app, but that won’t reduce the size of the Live Photos already in your library. Unfortunately, iOS 9 currently doesn’t allow converting existing Live Photos to normal, still photos. That’s where Lean comes in.
Lean is a free iPhone app by Tiny Whale that lets you remove just the video part of Live Photos, converting them to still shots, both individually and in bulk. It scans your phone for Live Photos, displaying them all in one place and allowing you to select multiple Live Photos for “cleanup” in one go. It then creates a copy of the still shot in every Live Photo within your photo library and deletes Live Photos themselves. You will, of course, have to grant the app access to Photos the first time you launch it and access to delete photos every time you use it. When it’s done, the app shows you the amount of storage you just saved.
For anyone with a 16 GB iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, it’d be wise to keep this app handy. You never know when you’re going to run out of storage, and if it’s while you’re out and about without access to a computer to transfer a few photos to, you might end up having to completely delete precious moments from your library just to make room for a few new snaps.
If you have an older device jailbroken on iOS 9 with the Live Photos feature enabled through use of a Cydia tweak (like Live Photos Enabler), we can confirm that this app works with that setup as well.
Hit the link provided below to download Lean for free from the App Store.
