Snapchat Lenses allow users to augment their selfies and videos with filters, effects, and other enhancements. Since Lenses were first introduced in September 2015, Snapchat has continued to expand its Lens offerings, providing users with fresh, innovative ways to express themselves.
The Origins of Lenses
Snapchat initially launched with 13 Lenses, which allowed users to showcase looks like vomiting rainbows or donning a golden crown. These early Lenses demonstrated Snapchat’s interest in augmented reality and the potential for fun, engaging selfie effects.
The initial 13 Lenses were just the beginning. Within a year, Snapchat opened up Lens development to all users through the Lens Studio desktop application. This allowed anyone to create their own Lenses and submit them to Snapchat for approval and distribution in the app.
By democratizing Lens creation, Snapchat enabled exponential growth in available Lenses. The company reviewed submissions and added the best user-generated Lenses into the app alongside its own creations. This kicked off a massive expansion in Lens variety and availability.
The Proliferation of Lenses
In April 2019, Snapchat shared that its community had already submitted over 500,000 Lenses for review through Lens Studio. Many of these user creations had been added to Snapchat, giving users fresh Lenses to play with daily.
Snapchat also continued generating its own innovative Lenses based on trending pop culture topics, holidays, current events, and more. The company has entire teams dedicated to coming up with fun, engaging Lens concepts.
Some of Snapchat’s most popular Lenses include:
- Holiday and seasonal Lenses like Santa hats, elf ears, and bunny ears
- Sponsored Lenses promoting brands, movies, TV shows, etc.
- “World Lenses” that incorporate your environment like rainbows or lightning
- Face morphing Lenses turning you into a talking animal or cartoon character
- Stylized beauty and makeup Lenses
Additionally, Snapchat has created innovative technologies like Scan to further enhance Lenses. Scan allows you to identify an object, place, or person to activate an experiential Lens like interactive AR games or educational content.
How Many Lenses Are There Now?
In October 2022, Snapchat officially hit more than 2 million Lenses available globally. This includes both Snapchat originals and user-generated Lenses approved for the app.
To put that number in perspective, here is how it has grown over the years:
Date | Number of Lenses |
---|---|
September 2015 | 13 |
April 2016 | 300+ |
April 2019 | 500,000+ |
December 2021 | 1.9 million+ |
October 2022 | 2 million+ |
That’s exponential growth over just 7 years! From 13 Lenses originally to over 2 million and counting now.
Daily Lens Usage
To put the 2 million Lenses in context, Snapchat also shared some stats on how many Lenses get used every day:
- Over 6 billion Lenses are played with every day on average
- Over 200 million people use Lenses daily
- There are over 3 billion Snaps with Lenses created daily
So while the total Library contains 2 million+ Lenses, the daily selection surfaced to users numbers in the hundreds. Still, that offers tremendous variety on a daily basis for Snapchatters to explore and use to creatively express themselves.
The Future of Lenses
Snapchat continues to innovate, increasing Lens capabilities through advances in machine learning and AR. Some exciting developments include:
- Computer vision – Lenses can now interact with what you are physically doing based on camera input
- Spatial recognition – Identify surfaces like walls or floors to anchor an effect in place in your environment
- Body tracking – Recognize body parts to apply effects to just your arm or leg for example
- Hand tracking – Identify hand shapes and motions to enable gestures to control AR experiences
As Lenses get smarter and more interactive, the possibilities become endless. Snapchat is sure to leverage these technologies to develop groundbreaking Lenses unmatched by any other platform.
Expect the Lens total to continue growing exponentially as Snapchat rolls out innovative capabilities. The company has teased collab Lenses that allow Snapchatters to interact together in AR, and world-scale experiences that transform your whole environment. The future looks very bright and entertaining!
Conclusion
In summary, here are some key facts on current Snapchat Lenses:
- There are over 2 million Lenses available globally as of October 2022
- Around 200 million people use Lenses daily
- Over 6 billion Lenses are played with every day on average
- The variety continues to grow thanks to Snapchat’s AR innovation and user-generated content
For Snapchatters, Lenses unlock a fun, creative way to communicate. Expect the Lens experience to keep evolving with Snapchat’s investment in AR technology. The possibilities for the future are incredibly exciting!