Two files behind one tap

When you shoot with Live Photos enabled, the camera captures about 1.5 seconds of footage before and after the moment you press the shutter. iOS saves this as a PHLivePhoto that bundles a still image (a HEIC or JPEG key frame) with a paired Motion file, a short QuickTime .mov clip with audio. In the Photos framework these appear as a single PHAsset whose `mediaSubtypes` include `photoLive`, but on disk they are two distinct resources.

The still is what you see in the grid and what gets used if you turn the Live Photo off. The Motion video is what animates when you press and hold. Because that clip is real video, often captured at high resolution, it adds meaningful weight on top of the still.

Why they cost extra space

A standard HEIC photo is one compressed image. A Live Photo adds a few seconds of video, so the combined asset is typically close to twice the size of the equivalent still. Multiply that across a camera roll where Live Photos is the default capture mode and the overhead adds up to a large, mostly invisible chunk of your photo storage.

You can shed the video weight without losing the picture. In Photos, select an image, tap the Live badge (top-left) and choose Off to convert it to a still, or use Share > Duplicate > Duplicate as Still Photo. Turning the feature off in Camera (or Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings > Live Photo) stops new captures from carrying the extra clip.

Finding the heavy ones

Not every Live Photo is worth keeping animated, and bursts of near-identical Live Photos are common storage offenders. A cleaner can flag Live Photos, group duplicates and similar shots, and let you keep the best frame as a still while removing the redundant video payloads, reclaiming space without combing through the library by hand.