Here’s why Google’s Motion Stills is my new favorite iPhone app

Apple introduced Live Photos with much fanfare as one of the marquee additions to the iPhone 6S, but I’ve never really got much out of the feature. Even when I do take a picture that could benefit from a little movement and sound, Apple’s implementation is lacking; the results are usually jerky and there aren’t many ways to share them.

A new app, however, solves my problems with Live Photos and comes from an unlikely source: Google. The Motion Stills app is incredible — it searches through your library of Live Photos, edits them into stable images with minimal shake, and converts them into easily shareable GIFs or movie files. You can even throw the movies — complete with sound — straight to Instagram, which otherwise doesn’t support Live Photos.

I was planning to go outside this afternoon to test Motion Stills by shooting some Live Photos, but after a few minutes playing with the app I realized I wouldn’t need to. The most impressive thing about it is how it retroactively edits your Live Photos — and almost always makes them better. Here are a few examples of pictures from my camera roll that I shot and often conceived as Live Photos, but was never really satisfied with until Google’s superior implementation.

Also, I can just put them on the web as regular GIFs rather than having to iMessage them to every Verge reader. How about that.