Facebook launches Moments, a new standalone app to share photos privately

Another day, another app from Facebook. This one’s all about the photographs that you, or your friends, take, and figuring out a new and secure way to share them.

It’s a brand new standalone app, and Facebook Creative Labs says it’s launching today in the United States. As the title of the app suggests, the app is all about the “moments” in our lives, and sharing them with the people that we want to share them with — and not necessarily everyone on our Facebook feed.

With Moments, users sync their photos with the app, and then the app will usetechnology behind the scenes to group those photos together. Like the images taken at a wedding, for example. On top of that, Moments will use facial recognition to help you find the people you’re looking for, too.

“Syncing photos with the Moments app is a private way to give photos to friends and get the photos you didn’t take. Moments groups the photos on your phone based on when they were taken and, using facial recognition technology, which friends are in them. You can then privately sync those photos quickly and easily with specific friends, and they can choose to sync their photos with you as well. Now, you and your friends have all the photos you took together.“

You’ll be able to search for friends, too, within the app.

As of publication, the app isn’t available in the App Store just yet. When it does go live, we’ll update with a download link.