Instagram has removed its standalone Boomerang and Hyperlapse apps from Apple’s App Store and Google Play, as reported by TechCrunch. The removal comes shortly after Instagram’s February 28th announcement that it would stop supporting the IGTV app, and the changes indicate that Instagram is opting to consolidate some of its separate offerings to focus on the main Instagram app.
“We’ve removed support for the standalone Boomerang and Hyperlapse apps to better focus our efforts on the main app,” Instagram spokesperson Christine Pai said in a statement to The Verge. “Boomerang is still supported in-app in Stories, and Layout remains a standalone app in the Store. We’ll continue working on new ways for people to be creative and have fun on Instagram.”
According to Apptopia data shared with TechCrunch, both apps’ last day in the stores was March 1st.
The Boomerang app, which was first released in 2015, created short, looping videos by taking a burst of photos that you could post on Instagram or Facebook. Although the standalone Boomerang app is gone, as Instagram noted in its statement, the feature lives on in Instagram Stories, where it was added in 2016.
Hyperlapse, revealed in 2014, let you make professional-looking time-lapse videos and, perhaps more importantly, offered impressive video stabilization. The technology came from Instagram’s first-ever acquisition, a company called Luma, and at that time, Hyperlapse was a pretty big deal. Clips from the stock camera app would often look pretty shaky, but Hyperlapse clips were much smoother. Now, though, smartphone hardware is far more capable of video stabilization, perhaps reducing the usefulness of an app like Hyperlapse. It’s unclear if the features from the app will show up somewhere else within Instagram.
Instagram has also baked the functionality of its Layout app into Instagram Stories.
Update March 7th, 5:42PM ET: Added context about Hyperlapse.
Update March 7th, 4:58PM ET: Added revised statement from Instagram.
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