Snapchat recently announced a bunch of new features for the platform at Snap Partner Summit event. The new features are mainly concentrated on improving the overall accessibility and navigation in the app, along with some moderate additional features like voice commands to pick original shows, lenses and more.
Snap Action Bar
Snapchat is adding a new Action Bar at the bottom to help you instantly navigate between various features in the app. As of now, the app supports only swipe gestures for navigation right now.
Snap Topics
Snapchat is making it easier for users to search Snaps based on certain Topics and Categories. This feature is like hashtags but uses a sticker instead.
Snap Places
Snapchat started integrating Places, a feature that adds prominent businesses and spots to the Snap Map. According to company, Place listings will show you Snaps from the location along with the address, reviews and working hours and also you can order food from within the app through Uber Eats, Postmates, DoorDash and GrubHub if you’re in US.
New Scan Partners
Snapchat’s Scan feature allows you to press and hold the camera to use related Lenses based on what it sees in the viewfinder. The company declared that Snapchat can now recognize 90% of trees and plants with its partnership with PlantSnap. It also can identify around 400 breeds. Hence, when you see an unknown plant, you can just scan it via Snapchat to know the details of plant. It also reported adding a nutrition scanner that rates the quality of supplements in packaged foods later this year.
Snap Originals
The company has announced its new Snap Originals shows includes Documentaries like Road Trippin, Queen of Stylez, First Person, Life by the Horns, Scripted Shows such as Frogtown, Action Royale, and Total Badass Wrestling, and also include Unscripted Shows such as Fake Up, Coach Kev, Move It.
Voice Scan
Along with all of these amazing features, the company has announced Voice Scan feature that allows you to use voice commands to pick Lenses. This feature is powered by SoundHound. For instance, you can say “Hey Snapchat, make my hair pink” and it will automatically apply a pink hair filter.
While this feature is quiet good, I feel there would be a lot of experiment and inaccuracy, and a learning curve to know what command will activate a specific lens.
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