Facebook Shuts Down Photo Syncing In Favor Of Moments App

All things considered, Moments offers more functionality than Photo Sync and makes it easier to find pictures you might want that others took during a mutual event.

The social juggernaut says that users have until January 10 to move their photos to the Moments app. “Starting this week, we are beginning to phase out Facebook’s photo syncing feature”, a Facebook spokesperson told Tech Insider.

Facebook is shutting down photo sync in its mobile apps, and is asking users to try the standalone Moments app instead. Photo-sync is a feature that mobile users can now use through the Facebook app in order to upload and backup photos on the social network.

Facebook have announced that support for Photo Sync will be discontinued, with users having to download a separate app via a pop-up notification in their News Feed. Those who choose not to take up Moments, will be able to download a zip file of their photos on their computer, or delete their photos via Facebook itself.

At present, photo-syncing will only be removed from Facebook in the regions where Moments will be available – a notable exception being Europe. It’s likely that photo sync will live on in regions where Moments is unavailable.

Moments was launched as a way to capitalise on Facebook’s face-recognition technology to automatically create photo albums of you and your friends. The platform also allows users to share their images with their friends on the site directly through the Facebook app. This change mirrors the controversial move Facebook made a year ago when it disabled messaging in its main app to drive adoption of its stand-alone Messenger one.

Just like what happened with the Messenger app, the Moments app will probably be avoided at first by some, just out of spite, but it will eventually grow dramatically in popularity once all the people using the old feature will realize that this, as opposed to nothing, is the best option.