Two of the biggest new features of the iPhone 6s are 3D Touch and Live Photos. And after adding support for the former earlier this year, Facebook is now starting to support the latter as well.
Starting today, Facebook will let users upload and view Live Photos inside of its iOS app. Uploading Live Photos will be similar to sharing standard photos, save for one extra step that’ll involve you tapping the “LIVE” box in the lower right corner when selecting your photo. You’ll have to tap that box with each Live Photo that you update.
Once uploaded, anyone on iOS 9 will be able to view your Live Photo, even if they don’t have an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus. The Live Photo will show up as a static image, but it’ll include a Live Photo icon in its lower right corner. When you press and hold on this icon, the Live Photo will play until you lift your finger back up.
While Apple touted Live Photos as a big new addition to the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, they don’t appear to have taken the world by storm quite yet. Many users end up simply accidentally taking Live Photos of them setting their phone on the table because they think that they’re just taking a still image. Apple even included a feature in iOS 9.1 that enabled Live Photos to sense when you raised and lowered your phone to prevent Live Photos that just showed the phone being set down on a table. Now that we’ll start to see Live Photos appear in Facebook feeds, perhaps more folks will become aware of the feature and be encouraged to use it, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
Support for Live Photos in Facebook is being added to the app today, but only select users will be able to upload Live Photos initially. Facebook will allow more users to upload Live Photos in 2016.