Twitter-owned Periscope is secretly building an app for the new Apple TV and now the company has issued a telling update to its iPhone application in the App Store. The biggest newsworthy addition in Periscope 1.2 is landscape mode for shooting video.
Ever since its debut, Periscope has only supported portrait video. Video streams in portrait orientation look good on smartphones, but no so much on widescreen television sets so today’s update could be viewed as a prelude to Periscope’s rumored Apple TV app.
Landscape video
Periscope says in a blog post that users can now hold their phones either in portrait or landscape when broadcasting live video.
As for viewers, they can continue holding their device in portrait, or match the broadcaster’s orientation to maintain full screen video.
“When we first launched Periscope, we only supported portrait broadcasting,” reads the post.
“As much as we’re fans of portrait video, we know that there are times where the scene you’re trying to capture is best expressed in landscape.”
“We know the community has been craving this feature — we wanted to be thoughtful about our approach to ensure a seamless experience across all of our platforms (iOS, Android and Web).”
Other improvements
In addition to shooting video in landscape orientation, the refreshed app brings out other goodies, too. There’s a new indicator beneath the broadcast title explaining who shared the video that showed up in your feed.
Facebook users can now share the link to a live broadcast or replay to the service. Lastly, visually impaired users will appreciate improved support for iOS accessibility features.
Mutual follow due in next version
Periscope for Android was also updated with the aforementioned goodies, plus a bonus perk that’s “coming soon to iOS”—the Mutual Follow feature.
Mutual follow makes private broadcasting easier by permitting you to select people from a list of mutual followers (people you follow, who also follow you) when starting a private broadcast.
“We think this list is a more natural selection of people who you are likely to broadcast to,” notes the company.
Periscope 1.2 highlights
The following enhancements are available in Periscope 1.2:
- Landscape: When a broadcaster holds their phone in landscape, the video will now be oriented properly for all viewers. Viewers can continue holding their device in portrait, or match the broadcaster’s orientation to maintain full screen video. Either way, you’ll never need to watch sideways video again.
- Share Indication: When someone you follow shares a broadcast, it appears in your home feed. In this update, we’ve added an indicator beneath the broadcast title explaining who shared it with you.
- Share on Facebook: You can now share the link to a LIVE broadcast or replay on Facebook. To see this option, you’ll need to log in to Facebook from the iOS Settings app on your device.
- Accessibility: We’ve heard from a lot of people that Periscope needs to be more accessible. In this version we’ve made large steps toward fully supporting our VoiceOver users.
- If you turn off chat/hearts while watching a live broadcast, you can now simply tap the “Chat Hidden” label to turn them back on.
- Fixed a bug where people who signed up with their phone number couldn’t change their profile image.
- Made some optimizations that should reduce the amount of space Periscope takes up on your device.
Periscope still lacks a native iPad interface.
Availability
The 14.4-megabyte app is compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch capable of running iOS 7.1 or later. Periscope features native display support for the iPhone 5/5s/5c, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus screen sizes.
The app is localized in English, Arabic, Bokmål, Norwegian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian Nynorsk, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.