Tumblr on desktop plays nicely with Apple's Live Photos
Tumblr is also working to bring the feature to Android.
Tumblr's website is now almost as Live Photo-friendly as its iOS app. The microblogging social network has finally added support for Apple's animated image format on desktop, nine months after introducing the capability on iOS. When you see the Live Photo icon -- check out those concentric circles on the top left in the picture above -- simply click and hold the image to play it. And yes, it comes with sound! Only reason we say the website is "almost" as Live Photo-friendly is because if you're using an iPhone, you can also turn the moving images into GIFs using the iOS app's GIF maker.
According to TechCrunch, Tumblr gets both the image (JPEG) and the video (MOV) components of Live Photos from the iPhones that took them. If you'll recall, Apple launched the feature with the 6s and the 6s Plus. To make Live Photos work in all browsers, Tumblr converts the MOV file into an MP4 and merges it with the JPEG component using a JavaScript solution it built. The company has open sourced and released the solution on GitHub and NPM, as well.
Tumblr also hasn't forgotten all the Android users out there. In its announcement post, the website's staff mentioned that they're also working to add Live Photo support to its Android app.
