Instagram releases Boomerang, a Live Photos-like iPhone app for creating looping clips

Instagram Boomerang 1.0 for iOS iPhone screenshot 001

Facebook-owned Instagram is taking on Live Photos, one of Apple’s headline iPhone 6s features, with a brand new 1-second video loop app called Boomerang. Available free of charge in the App Store, Boomerang aims to turn everyday moments into “something fun and unexpected.”

The app couldn’t be simpler. You just point your iPhone’s front or rear camera and press a button to take a burst of ten photos.

Boomerang then stitches the individual images together into a one-second sped-up video that plays forward and backward in a looping manner, similar in appearance and function to Apple’s Live Photos feature.

You can then share your looping-video on Facebook and Instagram right from the app, or save it to your Camera roll. These videos do not currently include audio. If you choose to share on Instagram, you can apply filters and use creative tools to edit your video before sharing it.

“Capture a friend jumping off a diving board, defying physics as she flies back and forth through the air,” reads the Instagram blog.

“Transform an ordinary selfie with your friends into a funny video. Get that exact moment your friend blows out his birthday candles, then watch them come back to life again and again.”

https://vimeo.com/143161189

Boomerang videos are automatically stabilized on supported devices. It’s nice that you don’t need an Instagram account to use Boomerang.

Boomerang is Instagram’s fourth mobile app, in addition to its main mobile client, the photo-collage app Layout and another app called Hyperlapse for experimenting with motion in new and exciting ways with attractive time-lapse clips.

Availability

Boomerang requires an iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 7.0 or later and is localized in English, Bokmål, Norwegian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Traditional Chinese, Turkish and Vietnamese.

Grab Boomerang from Instagram free in the App Store.