Live Photos

Live Photos

Live photos contain a still image and a short MOV companion. kei can download both components, only one component, or neither.

Config

[photos]
live_photo_mode = "both"          # both, image-only, video-only, skip
live_resolution = "original"      # original, medium, thumb
live_photo_mov_filename_policy = "suffix" # suffix, original

How it works

When an asset has a live photo component, the download pipeline creates separate tasks for the still image and the MOV. Both land in the same directory.

MOV filename policy

suffix (default)

Source	Still image	MOV file
HEIC	IMG_1234.HEIC	IMG_1234_HEVC.MOV
JPEG	IMG_1234.JPG	IMG_1234.MOV

original

Source	Still image	MOV file
HEIC	IMG_1234.HEIC	IMG_1234.MOV
JPEG	IMG_1234.JPG	IMG_1234.MOV

MOV collision handling

If a regular video already exists at the same path as a live photo companion MOV, kei compares file sizes. Different size means a different file, so the companion MOV gets the asset ID appended before the extension, such as IMG_0001-ASSET_ID.MOV. Matching size is treated as already downloaded.

Mode

Mode	Still image	MOV companion
both	yes	yes
image-only	yes	no
video-only	no	yes
skip	no	no

This does not affect standalone videos. Use [filters].media for that.

Edited live photos

Set edited = true to include adjusted/edited extras when Apple provides them:

[photos]
resolution = "original"
live_resolution = "original"
edited = true

Missing edited extras are skipped.

Dedup suffix consistency

When two live photos share the same base filename and size-based deduplication adds a suffix to the still image, the MOV companion derives from the deduped still name too. That keeps the pair visually matched on disk.

Related

• Configuration
• Content Filtering
• Folder Structure