Google Photos finally lets you export Motion Photos as GIFs
One of the coolest features found on the Google Pixel is the ability to take Motion photos. Simply put, these are photos that also have animated video clips stored with them. When viewing inside Google Photos, you can toggle the still image or video clip by long pressing the image.
When they first launched on the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, the only way to share an actual Motion photo was by exporting it as a video clip, then sharing that video file via messaging apps or social networks. That’s all great and dandy, but if you wanted to share a Motion photo as a GIF, that would take a special 3rd party app to convert the video file. It was sort of a long process for something you should be able to do in Google Photos. Now you can.
Coming along with the latest March security patch update — and Google Photos 3.15 — is the newfound ability to export Motion photos as GIFs. Simply open a photo, click the 3-dot overflow menu and tap Export. From there you’ll have the option to save a Motion photo as a Video, GIF, or Still photo.
Keep in mind that GIF sizes are rather sizable with a resolution of 768×1024 and floating around 12MB in size depending on the Motion photo in question. This is well above the 300kB file attachment liit when sending an MMS, so sharing these in your text messaging app is probably out of the question. You should still be okay with instant messaging apps like Facebook Messenger or Google Hangouts, so those are always good options.