Do Live Photos take up more space? How to stop them

Short answer: Yes. A Live Photo is two files: the still photo and a video of about three seconds around it, and that video is often around half of the total size. To stop new ones, turn Live off in the Camera and make sure Settings › Camera › Preserve Settings › Live Photo is on, so it stays off. Turning Live off in Photos does not free anything, because the video stays in the file.

What is inside a Live Photo

When you take a Live Photo, the Camera records what happens about 1.5 seconds before and after you press the shutter. The result is stored as a still image plus a short video. Press and hold the photo to play it. If you rarely do, most of that video is space you never use.

Turn Live Photos off for good

1. Open the Camera in Photo mode.
2. Turn Live off. On iOS 27, tap Live and choose Off. On iOS 26, tap the Live control and choose Live Off. On iOS 18, tap the Live icon at the top so that a line appears through it.
3. Open Settings › Camera › Preserve Settings and check that Live Photo is on. It is on by default.

If that switch is off, the Camera turns Live back on the next time you open it. That is the usual reason it seems to come back on its own.

What about the Live Photos you already have?

Here Photos is less helpful. Turning Live off while editing a photo only stops it from playing; the video is still inside the file, so no space is freed. Deleting a Live Photo frees the space, but also the photo. Photos has no built-in way to keep the still and throw away the motion.

The practical approach: keep the Live Photos you actually play, such as children, pets and moments where the movement matters, and turn the rest, usually the ones taken by habit, into regular photos.

What does DustFox do differently?

Live Photos in DustFox does exactly that last step. It saves the still as a regular photo, copied byte for byte, so its quality, date and location stay the same, and it leaves the motion out. The space it frees is measured, not guessed, and shown before you confirm. The original Live Photo waits 30 days in Recently Deleted, so a mistake can be undone. Everything happens on the phone.