Facebook Pushing Users Toward “Moments” Photo-Sharing App By Deleting Synced Photos

Image courtesy of Facebook

If you’ve been syncing your phone’s photos to your Facebook account but don’t want to download the social media’s “Moments” picture app, prepare to back that stuff up soon.

The photo-syncing feature was an optional thing Facebook launched on iOS in 2012, that allowed users to automatically copy all their photos from their phones to a special, private folder tied to their Facebook account. Those photos could then be shared with whoever you like on Facebook.

Come July 7, Facebook will be deleting those special synced albums, notifying users that it already moved the photos over to its newish app, Moments — which you may or may not have downloaded. You’ll have no choice after that July deadline, however — it’s either back up your photos by downloading them directly to your computer, upload them to your Facebook profile as a new album, or get Moments.

“If you want to keep these photos, download and log into Moments before July 7,” Facebook said.

It’s worth noting that Facebook has been upfront about the fact that this would happen, The Verge points out, but didn’t tell users previously that the photos would be deleted from synced albums once they were moved to Moments.

To be clear: this does NOT include any photos you upload and directly post to your profile or in other Facebook albums. Facebook will just be deleting the private album of photos that you’ve synced with your account and may have shared privately with folks, but haven’t necessarily published.

Here’s how to download a photo you’ve synced, per Facebook:

1. Go to your profile, click “Photos,” then “Synced from Phone”
2. Click the photo you want to download, click “Options” at the bottom of that photo
3. Select “Download”

You can also download all your synced photos in one fell swoop: go to the Synced from Phone section of your Photos and click the link to download.

(h/t TechCrunch)

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