Live Photos have been around on iOS since as early as 2015. The feature has since made its way to other platforms and is now a staple among most flagships. A Live Photo is a hybrid between a video clip and a photo. It consists of 1.5 seconds of video before and after you tap the shutter button.

For all the benefits that they offer, Live Photos still exist in a weird limbo. While its name indicates that it is a photo, it is identical to a GIF for all practical purposes. The problem gets even more complicated while trying to share it. Social media platforms are often unable to differentiate between a regular photo and a Live Photo. Very often, the only way to go about is to convert a Live Photo into something more traditional, such as a video or GIF. As of today, you can directly share Live Photos on Twitter on iOS.

Give the gift of GIFs. You can now upload your iOS Live Photos as GIFs anywhere you upload photos on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/D8TIfsBwyd

— Twitter (@Twitter) December 11, 2019

All you need to do is select a Live Photo from your album and share it as a GIF on Twitter. For all practical purposes, Twitter will still treat it as a GIF, so you don't have to worry about dropped frames and the likes. The functionality isn't restricted to just the iOS Twitter app and works on all platforms. The image in question, however, has to be captured from a device running iOS.

Android users will have to wait a bit longer before they can offload their Live Photos onto Twitter directly, as is the tradition. It is rather surprising that it took Twitter all of four years to support such a seemingly common file type, that too for only iOS. Regardless of its timing, most of the replies to the Tweet are overwhelmingly positive and welcome the change. Others are clamoring for an edit button while a vocal minority are squaring off against those who want the edit button. It looks like an average day on Twitter, overall.