Instagram quietly rolls out new camera features for iPhone 7 and 7 Plus users

Thursday, Instagram quietly announced that it is rolling out an update to its iOS app that improves support for the sharper iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus cameras and adds Live Photo support. Instagram’s co-founder Mike Krieger made the announcement on Twitter earlier that afternoon.

Both of these new features were originally teased by the company back at the iPhone 7 unveiling event in September, but they’re now rolling out to everyone.

First off, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus users can now share images in more vivid color thanks to support for wide color capture and display in Instagram. The difference may be hard to see at first, but if you compare a photo taken prior to today’s update with a new photo, you’ll quickly see the difference.

Additionally, today’s silent update allows users to turn Live Photos taken with their device into a Boomerang, which is of course Instagram’s own quick looping/GIF image format.

In order to turn a Live Photo into a Boomerang, open Instagram and swipe left to the in-app camera. Then, swipe up to upload a Live Photo from your camera roll that has been taken in the last 24 hours. While previewing your post, use 3D Touch on the image and a loading wheel will appear. From there, the Live Photo will appear as a Boomerang and can be posted.

1. Swipe up from the Instagram Stories camera
2. Select a Live Photo from your camera roll
3. 3D Touch on the image preview
4. The image will convert to a Boomerang
5. Share!

Live Photo support in third-party apps has been slow to roll out, with popular apps like Twitter not supporting the platform. Interestingly, a few months back, Tumblr became the first social network to launch support for Live Photos on the web, though it’s using a somewhat roundabout method to do so.

Live Photos and wider colors in Instagram have been rolling out slowly to iOS users over the past week, but Krieger says the update should have hit mostly everyone by now. Again, there’s no update necessary via the App Store as it’s a server-side upgrade directly from Instagram.