live photos do not animate in Photos on iMac

I too had the same problem.

What I did to resolve the problem is delete all the photos on my Mac since Live photos became available in iOS9 and then manually imported them onto the Mac and all the live photos appeared. Obviously don't do this unless you still have the photos on your iOS device.

Thereafter when I log on top my Mac I delete any recent photos that have been imported through Photo Stream and manually import them via usb.

This forces all photos on the Mac to have 'Live' capabilities if shot in 'Live' mode.

how did you move it when 'apple employees dont read these forums' as is always stated?

I have a similar set up to zoecorkhill, in that I don't use iCloud Photo Library as my photo library is too large. Instead I download my photos to my MacBook Pro to save them, and then back up to a portable hard drive too.

On my latest download, I see that I have some "live" photos but also accompanied by a still.

Is there any reason why I need to keep this still or can I just delete it, as I would with any other duplicates?

I discovered there is an issue with the live photos with mac. Apparently, if you air drop your photos to your mac, the live photo feature will be greyed out in the menu feature. In order to utilize the live photo feature, you have to either send it via iMessage or transfer via usb cable.

The other way that live photo can be removed if you edit your photo on your iPhone. I too, I have an iPhone 6s plus

I discovered there is an issue with the live photos with mac. Apparently, if you air drop your photos to your mac, the live photo feature will be greyed out in the menu feature. In order to utilize the live photo feature, you have to either send it via iMessage or transfer via usb cable.

Frankie3one wrote:

either send it via iMessage or transfer via usb cable.

How can I transfer it via cable? And when this is done – in which app do you view the live photos on the Mac?

(Until now I could only transfer them via iMessage (WiFi!) to myself.)

Use your USB sync cable from iPhone to Macbook or imac and open the photos app. You would import your photos to your Mac.

You can view the live photos in the photos app.

Frankie3one wrote:

You can view the live photos in the photos app.

Many thanks!

I thought it's not possible to watch live photos in Photos, so I never tried.

(Did Apple mention this...?)

Now I think it's time to move from my Aperture library to Photos... 😕

For now you can only do this via cable connection,

you can get more information on this page: Import photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

I cannot get Live Photos to work on my iMac. I thought it was just Photostream (which I use since my Photos library is 300GB and I don't have room for that on iCloud Photo Library), but as a test I turned off Photostream, took a couple Live Photos with my iPhone 6s, used the USB cable to directly import those shots to Photos (macOS Sierra) and they still don't animate, nor do I have the option to enable Live Photo (greyed out in contextual menu). Re-check on iPhone 6s and yes, they are Live Photos, but they just don't work on iMac w/Sierra.

Also, is there a special header in the sidebar for Live Photos when they do work, the same way they have one for Panoramas, Screenshots, etc?

While we're at it, I haven't had a panorama shot show up in the Panorama header since February even though I take many. What is going on here?

Live Photos works only with iCloud photo library enabled. sadly.