Photos on Facebook are about to become a whole lot more interesting with the addition of Apple’s Live Photos, a new image format that’s somewhere between a static photo and an ultra-short video.
On Monday, Facebook (FB) began to roll out support for Live Photos, a feature Apple unveiled back in September as part of its newest lineup of iPhones, the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. Lasting about 1.5 seconds before and after you press the shutter button, Live Photos are akin to a GIF and can also include sound.
Support for Live Photos is only available for a small number of Facebook users at the moment, and the company plans on continuing its rollout in 2016, a company spokesman confirmed to Coins2Day.
Uploading Live Photos on Facebook is quite similar to uploading normal photos, with an additional box that gives the user the option to upload each image as a static or Live Photo, as TechCrunch notes. Though only users with an iPhone 6S or 6S Plus can upload Live Photos to Facebook, all users with an iPhone running on iOS 9 will be able to view them. A small icon at the bottom of such photos lets users view them in motion when tapped.
This isn’t the first GIF-like format to appear on Facebook: In September, the social network added the ability for users to record a very short video that resembles a Vine or GIF as their profile image (though it’s recorded in video format, not in GIF format).
Facebook’s support for Live Photos has been anticipated since Apple (AAPL) unveiled the feature in September. Earlier this month, Tumblr added support for the format as well.
