Many of us use Live Photos to capture memories in moving photo snippets on our iPhones. But did you know that you can make Live Photos bounce back and forth, similar to the popular boomerang effect in Instagram and Snapchat? Here's how to do it.

There's More to Live Photos

Live Photos is a camera feature embedded in iOS that lets users record short video snippets on either side of the photos they snap. This results in a three-second video with audio.

Live Photos is a pretty old feature that debuted in iOS 9 with the release of the iPhone 6S—it was one of its flagship features.

A few years later, alongside the iOS 11 update, Apple further upped its game by adding effects on Live Photos. And it's these effects that let you create a boomerang on your iPhone.

Aside from adding effects, you can edit your Live Photos, use Live Photos as wallpapers, and even convert them into GIFs right on your iPhone.

How to Add a Boomerang Effect to Live Photos

Adding an effect to a Live Photo on your iPhone is easy. To begin, take a Live Photo as usual and follow these steps:

  1. Open the Camera, then tap the Live Photo icon. The icon turns yellow when it's turned on.
  2. Tap the shutter button as usual.

Once you're done taking your Live Photo, go to the Photos app to edit it:

  1. Open Photos, then select the Live Photo you want to edit.
  2. Tap the Live Photo icon, then select Bounce.
  3. Instead of seeing Live above the photo, you'll see Bounce.

Bounce makes your Live Photo play and then bounce back in reverse on a loop, similar to the popular Boomerang effect on social media platforms like Instagram. Aside from this, there are two other effects you can try out:

  • Loop: Instead of having to hard-press a Live Photo to play, this effect plays it on a loop. It comes with a motion-blur effect.
  • Long Exposure: This mimics the photography trick of using a slow shutter speed to blur the moving elements of a photo without affecting the static ones.

You can also turn off the additional Live Photo options if you just want a regular photo. Since you can turn on/off the Live Photo features for a picture at any point, doing this won't save storage space on your iPhone.

Make Live Photos More Awesome

You no longer have to use social media platforms or third-party apps to make boomerangs on your iPhone. Simply snap a Live Photo as you normally would with your iPhone's camera, and then switch it to the Bounce effect in the Photos app; it couldn't be easier.