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I Love This Hidden iPhone Camera Trick for Stunning Long-Exposure Photos

Your iPhone can already take beautiful, dreamy long-exposure photos. Here’s how to do it.

If you’ve ever seen artistic photos of waterfalls or rivers where the water is blurred to look like flowing ribbons, then you already know the beautiful effect of a long exposure photo. By allowing moving subjects in a scene to become blurred, it creates a great sense of motion, especially when those blurry subjects are contrasted against static elements such as rocks or trees. While this technique used to require a bulky DSLR, filters and a tripod to achieve shutter speeds over several seconds, you can now achieve much the same result using just your iPhone. 

You don’t even need the latest iPhone 16 Pro or Pro Max to take advantage of this feature. It works on any iPhone launched after the iPhone 6.

Read more: Take Your Best-Ever Photos With Your iPhone

The technique uses Live Photos, a feature that turns a still image into a short animation by recording a few seconds of video when you fire the shutter. By analyzing which objects are moving, the iPhone captures the movement and blurs it. It’s also able to recognize what isn’t moving (a rock or a wall, for example) and attempts to keep those objects sharp and in focus. This lets you capture long-exposure images in even bright midday sun without using a tripod or filter. Take that, DSLRs. 

Here’s how you can do it.

Know what makes a good long-exposure shot

Not everything works as a long-exposure image. A close-up of a flower blowing in the breeze will just become a blurry mess, while a picture of a static car will remain, well, static. 

What you need is a scene where there are both static and moving elements. Waterfalls are common subjects, as the rushing water will be blurred while the surrounding rocks will remain solid. Any body of water, really, would be a good subject to experiment with. 

You can also try busy city streets. The long-exposure effect keeps the buildings and roads sharp and fixed in the image, but the people walking all around will be blurred into ghostly figures, which looks atmospheric and dramatic. 

Turn on Live Photos

Getting a long-exposure image requires the movement that’s recorded in a Live Photo, so it’s critical that that mode is activated when shooting. It’s located in the top right of the screen in the camera (when held in portrait orientation) or the top left (in landscape orientation). You’ll see an icon of two circles surrounded by a third dotted circle. If there’s no line through it, then Live Photos is activated. If there’s a line through it, tap the icon and you’ll see the message «Live» appear onscreen in a little yellow box. 

Keep steady

Although the iPhone doesn’t require a tripod to get a good long-exposure image, you’ll get the best results if you keep the phone as steady as possible while it’s taking the Live image. I suggest resting the phone against a wall or some other fixed surface while shooting. If you have to hold the phone in your hand, I find that tucking my elbows in toward my body and holding my breath helps decrease motion blur while taking the shot. 

It’s a good idea to take multiple shots too, hammering the shutter button while you hold the position. This way you’ll increase your chances of capturing at least one image that’s stable enough to produce an attractive long exposure.

Create the long exposure

Once you’ve captured your Live image, it’s time to transform it into the actual long exposure. Start by opening your image in the gallery app. In the top left you’ll see a small icon saying Live with a small downward-pointing arrow next to it. Tap the arrow and you’ll have the option to turn the image into a looping GIF, a bouncing GIF that plays forwards then backwards or, down at the bottom, a long exposure. 

It’ll take a second or two, but you’ll quickly see how any motion in your shot has been blurred into the dreamy effect you’re after. You can then zoom in to check that it’s still nice and sharp. Feel free to apply the same effect to other photos you took of the same scene, just in case they worked out better. 

If you happen to still be on iOS 14 or older, open the image you’ve settled on in your gallery and swipe up. This will bring up a panel called Effects where you can loop the motion in the video into GIFs. Swipe to the end of the effects panel though and you’ll see one called Long Exposure. Tap it. But you really should update your phone to a more recent version.   

Make long-exposure photos from existing Live images

Have a look through your library to see if you already have other images that would work for long-exposure photos. The great thing about using the iPhone’s long-exposure tool is that you don’t need to use it while you’re shooting. You can go back and apply it to any Live image you’ve taken up until now. 

Perhaps you visited Niagara Falls in New York or Havasu Falls in Arizona a few years ago and you happened to have had Live Photos activated when taking your shots. You can swipe up and activate long exposure on any of those shots. You can even go into your Live Photos album in your gallery to see all the shots you’ve got on your phone that can be transformed into long exposures. My advice? Put a good podcast on, settle into a comfy chair and see what dreamy shots you can dig out of your library. 

I Took 600+ Photos With the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. Look at My Favorites

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Google races to put Gemini at the center of Android before Apple’s AI reboot

Google is using its latest Android rollout to position Gemini as the AI layer across phones, Chrome, laptops and cars.

Google is using its latest Android rollout to make Gemini less of a chatbot and more of an operating layer across the phone, browser, car and laptop, just weeks before Apple is expected to show its own Gemini-powered Apple Intelligence reboot at WWDC.
Ahead of its Google I/O developer conference next week, the company previewed a number of Android updates, including AI-powered app automation, a smarter version of Chrome on Android, new tools for creators, a redesigned Android Auto experience, and a sweeping set of new security features.
Alphabet is counting on Gemini to help Google compete directly with OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for artificial intelligence models and services, while also serving as the AI backbone across its expansive portfolio of products, including Android. Meanwhile, Gemini is powering part of Apple’s new AI strategy, giving Google a role in the iPhone maker’s reset even as it races to prove its own version of personal AI on the phone is further along.
Sameer Samat, who oversees Google’s Android ecosystem, told CNBC that Google is rebuilding parts of Android around Gemini Intelligence to help users complete everyday tasks more easily.
“We’re transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system,” he said.
As part of Tuesday’s announcements. Google said Gemini Intelligence will be able to move across apps, understand what’s on the screen and complete tasks that would normally require a user to jump between multiple services. That means Android is moving beyond the traditional assistant model, where users ask a question and get an answer, and acting more like an agent.
For instance, Google says Gemini can pull relevant information from Gmail, build shopping carts and book reservations. Samat gave the example of asking Gemini to look at the guest list for a barbecue, build a menu, add ingredients to an Instacart list and return for approval before checkout.
A big concern surrounding agentic AI involves software taking action on a user’s behalf without permissions. Samat said Gemini will come back to the user before completing a transaction, adding, “the human is always in the loop.”
Four months after announcing its Gemini deal with Google, Apple is under pressure to show a more capable version of Apple Intelligence, which has been a relative laggard on the market. Apple has long framed privacy, hardware integration and control of the user experience as its advantages.
Google’s Android push is designed to show it can bring AI deeper into the device experience while still giving users control over what Gemini can see, where it can act and when it needs confirmation.
The app automation features will roll out in waves, starting with the latest Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones this summer, before expanding across more Android devices, including watches, cars, glasses and laptops later this year.
The company is also redesigning Android Auto around Gemini, turning the car into another major surface for its assistant. Android Auto is in more than 250 million cars, and Google says the new release includes its biggest maps update in a decade and Gemini-powered help with tasks like ordering dinner while driving.
Alphabet’s AI strategy has been embraced by Wall Street, which has pushed the company’s stock price up more than 140% in the past year, compared to Apple’s roughly 40% gain. Investors now want to see how Gemini can become more central to the products people use every day.
WATCH: Alphabet briefly tops Nvidia after report of $200 billion Anthropic cloud deal

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Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis after glitch allowed some vehicles to ‘drive into standing water’

Waymo issued a voluntary recall of about 3,800 of its robotaxis to fix software issues that could allow them to drive into flooded roadways.

Waymo is recalling about 3,800 robotaxis in the U.S. to fix software issues that could allow them to “drive onto a flooded roadway,” according to a letter on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website.
The voluntary recall is for Waymo vehicles that use the company’s fifth and sixth generation automated driving systems (or ADS), the U.S. auto safety regulator said in the letter posted Tuesday.
Waymo autonomous vehicles in Austin, Texas, were seen on camera driving onto a flooded street and stalling, requiring other drivers to navigate around them. It’s the latest example of a safety-related issue for the Alphabet-owned AV unit that’s rapidly bolstering its fleet of vehicles and entering new U.S. markets.
Waymo has drawn criticism for its vehicles failing to yield to school buses in Austin, and for the performance of its vehicles during widespread power outages in San Francisco in December, when robotaxis halted in traffic, causing gridlock.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it’s “identified an area of improvement regarding untraversable flooded lanes specific to higher-speed roadways,” and opted to file a “voluntary software recall” with the NHTSA.
“Waymo provides over half a million trips every week in some of the most challenging driving environments across the U.S., and safety is our primary priority,” the company said.
Waymo added that it’s working on “additional software safeguards” and has put “mitigations” in place, limiting where its robotaxis operate during extreme weather, so that they avoid “areas where flash flooding might occur” in periods of intense rain.
WATCH: Waymo launches new autonomous system in Chinese-made vehicle

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