GIF to Live Photo
Turn an animated GIF into a Live Photo you can save to Photos and press and hold. The GIF is re-encoded to H.264 in your browser, then paired with a still exactly the way a camera Live Photo is.
Nothing is uploaded. Your files are processed in this browser and never leave your device.
How to turn a GIF into a Live Photo
- 1
Choose a GIF
Drop an animated GIF. We read its frame timing locally to work out how long the movie inside the Live Photo needs to be.
- 2
Let it record
A GIF has to become H.264 before it can serve as the movie half, and recording runs in real time — a three-second GIF takes about three seconds.
- 3
Download and import
Download the pair and save it into Photos on your iPhone. The still and the movie carry the same identifier, so they arrive as one Live Photo.
Why convert a GIF to a Live Photo
A GIF to Live Photo that actually pairs
A GIF is not video, so this is the one conversion that re-encodes. We record it to H.264, then write the same pairing metadata an iPhone camera writes, so iOS treats the result as a real Live Photo.
It runs on the device, not on a server
The recording and the pairing both happen in this browser tab. Your GIF never leaves your device, and there is no upload to wait for.
Any GIF you already have works
Loops, memes, screen recordings exported as GIF — if the browser can animate it, we can turn it into the movie half of a Live Photo.
Honest about the trade-off
H.264 has no alpha channel, so transparent areas become a solid colour, and recording takes as long as the GIF plays. Those are limits of the format, not of the conversion.
Other Live Photo conversions
- Video to Live PhotoMP4 or MOV in, a paired Live Photo out — without re-encoding the video.
- Live Photo to videoPull the movie out of the pair as a normal video file you can send or edit.
- Live Photo to still imageGet a plain JPEG out of a Live Photo — the cover frame or any frame you pick.
- Live Photo to GIFTurn the movie half into a looping GIF that plays in any chat or forum.
GIF to Live Photo FAQ
You can make 3 Live Photos a day without an account, or 10 when signed in. The recording and pairing still happen entirely on your device.
Because the only way a browser can produce H.264 is to record it, and recording happens in real time. Every other tool on this site is instant because nothing is re-encoded.
The ones that can record MP4 — Safari on iPhone, iPad and Mac from 14.5, and desktop browsers with a system H.264 encoder, which Chrome has on macOS and Windows. If yours cannot, the tool says so before you wait for anything.
No. H.264 has no alpha channel, so transparent areas become a solid background. GIF’s one-bit transparency cannot survive the conversion.
Very close for the shape of the motion. H.264 is more efficient than GIF, so it usually looks better rather than worse — but a GIF’s limited palette is baked into the pixels and cannot be recovered.
Ready to try it?
Everything runs in your browser tab. Nothing is uploaded or installed. Start with 3 free conversions a day, or 10 when signed in.
Use the tool aboveOr convert the other way: