Instagram adds Face Filters, because of course it did

Here we go again: Instagram has added another feature ‘inspired’ by Snapchat. This time it’s Face Filters, which have already been available on Facebook for a while. It was only a matter of time, but at least there are a couple of original features today as well.

The filters work pretty much exactly as you’d expect, especially if you’ve used the ones on Facebook. There are animated animal ears, glasses, crowns, floating math equations (presumably to make it look like you’re thinking really hard), etc. It’s the cutesy stuff we’ve come to expect – I mean just look at those happy millennials in the promo video:

These work for stills, videos and Boomerang, and they can be sent directly to individual friends or added to your story. There doesn’t appear to be an easy way to post them to your feed (which is for the best, if you ask me).

As for the other features, you can now create videos that play backwards with a ‘Rewind’ feature. That should allow for some fun effects; you could use that to make it look like you have control of the Force and make objects fly back into your hand.

Lastly, there’s a hashtag sticker, which helps you add some background or context to your posts. Your friends can tap on this hashtag to check out more posts about the topic.

With Face Filters now on Instagram, that should pretty much complete the set of useful things it can ape from Snapchat – here’s hoping we see more original new features from now on. The updates are rolling out today to iOS and Android.