Vine has brought its Android app up to speed with the iOS counterpart, adding revining, camera tools, channels and more, along with one more update that the iOS doesn’t have– a capture widget. The little homescreen widget immediately boots up the Vine video recording screen so you don’t miss the beginning of those sudden, sharable moments.
The green video icon on the Android home screen lets user bypass the Vine homescreen feed that the app’s normal icon opens. This new addition could give Vine an edge when pitted against Instagram, which requires multiple taps to open the app and switch to video before you can start recording a mini-movie.
This shortcut will likely remain exclusively available to Android users, since iOS doesn’t support the home screen customization.
All other revisions to the app were released for iOS last week. These include revining for showing your followers Vines shot by someone else, 15 new channels for exploring different categories of Vines, and protected posts for those private moments. There’s the new camera tools from Vine for iOS too, like a grid for lining up shots, the ghost silhouette for keeping stop-motion shots steady, and the ability to delete and reshoot your last clip.
While Vine and Instagram want to keep the publishing flow as short and quick as possible, their latest updates show a big effort to please power users.
The Vine for Android update should be available now or shortly from Google Play, and you can also get these features minus the capture widget on iOS.