Officially GoneINTERNET & TECH

Facebook Moments

Facebook used face recognition to find friends in your camera roll, but not enough people used the separate app to keep its private photo groups alive.

HOW CLOSE TO REALITY100/100
CATEGORYInternet & Tech
LIFECYCLE2015—2019
00

Quick facts

Existence state
Officially Gone
Peak stage
general availability
Research confidence
high
Last verified
01

What it was

A formally released mobile application for organising and privately sharing event photos with Facebook friends.

Moments grouped pictures by time and recognised faces to suggest private exchanges with the people shown.

02

Existence timeline

Moments launches

Facebook releases the private photo-sharing app.

Regional limitations

European face-recognition rules alter or delay features.

Video and sharing tools expand

The app creates movies and richer shared collections.

Development slows

The separate product receives fewer major updates.

Closure announced

Facebook opens an export route for stored media.

Moments shuts down

The private collections leave the app.

03

Why it ended

Facebook closed the app on 25 February 2019, citing low usage, and offered a short export period.

04

Last confirmed trace

Exported albums, screenshots, app packages and contemporary reporting preserve its grouped photo experience.
05

What it left behind

Moments illustrates both Facebook's standalone-app experiments and the privacy tension around automatic face recognition.

06

How we classified it

The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.

Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.

07

Sources & verification

Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.

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