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Is there a way to make all the Live Photos not live

Is there a way to make all of my current Live Photos not live or do I have to do it singly

iPhone 11, iOS 16

Posted on Oct 12, 2023 9:58 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 28, 2024 12:24 PM

Not helpful

6 replies

Oct 12, 2023 11:27 AM in response to Jessica524

You can do it in batches by exporting all Live photos as Original to a folder on the Desktop. Then delete all of the .mov files in that folder. Once the .mov files are removed you can reimport those files back into the library. Once they are back in the library and you're confirmed that are whaat you want you can delete the Live version from the library.


Also for future Photos make sure Live Photos is not selected on your iPhone when you take pictures.


Jun 19, 2024 11:13 PM in response to adamfromtempe

hmm, works for me as Old Toad described. Live Photos" Smart album has 484 Live Photos, I "export originals" to a Finder folder and delete and empty Photos trash, delete the 484 .mov files in the Finder folder, import remaining 484 .jpg files, and no more Live Photos in the Photos library.


And for me setting this works (unless I accidentally re-enable Live Photos in the Camera) iPhone > Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings > Live Photo ON works (i.e. Preserve the Live Photo setting, rather than automatically reset to Live Photo turned on). I, too, do not like Live Photos -- if I want a movie, I shoot a movie. But some people might like them so I can live with that.


Jun 19, 2024 7:50 PM in response to Jessica524

This is infuriating. It's bad enough that the setting designed to make sure live photo option stays off by default in iOS doesn't work, but I just learned it isn't possible to change them to regular photos in a batch in my MacOS photo library.


Using the existing smart album, I can isolate the 200 live photos in my library. When I create a new smart album with this attribute, there are also 200. At first I thought there was some bug that was limiting how many could be turned off at once, since the only option I was given was to "Turn ON Live Photo".


However after some tinkering, it became clear these 200 photos are not all "live" at all. It's the smart albums - both the one there by default & the new one I created - that are broken. So there doesn't seem to be any way to turn them off in a batch, because there's no way to group them in the first place. Very frustrating.

Is there a way to make all the Live Photos not live

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