From today, Snapchat users will be able to discover and unlock thousands of Lenses built by the Snapchat community around the world using the new Lens Explorer feature. Lens Explorer can be invoked by tapping the new icon that appears when the Lens Carousel is active.
Explaining how to select Lenses, Snap said:
"Tap a Lens tile to unlock a Lens and be taken directly to the Snap Camera, or browse Lenses in featured Stories. Unlock a Lens by swiping up on Snaps in these Stories."
Community Lenses can be built using the Lens Studio which launched in the latter half of 2017. According to Snap, over 100,000 unique Lenses have been submitted which have been viewed by users over 2.5 billion times. Snap will be hoping to boost the viewing figure with the launch of Lens Explorer which will make it easier for users to apply community Lenses and share their consequent pictures with friends.
Snap said that Lens Explorer will be available on iOS at launch but didn’t confirm whether Android would get the new feature just yet. If you’re interested in creating your own Lenses, be sure to check out Lens Studio which, by now, has had several months to mature a bit. Lens Studio is free to download, and it can run on Windows and Mac.
If you run Snapchat on Android let us know if you have this feature yet.