Facebook just announced a new standalone called Moments, which lets users share photos with friends privately. What it’s really about, however, is the syncing of photos with those of your friends.

“Syncing photos with the Moments app is a private way to give photos to friends and get the photos you didn’t take,” explains product manager Will Ruben. “Moments groups the photos on your phone based on when they were taken and, using facial recognition technology, which friends are in them. You can then privately sync those photos quickly and easily with specific friends, and they can choose to sync their photos with you as well. Now, you and your friends have all the photos you took together.”

“Moments also keeps all of your synced photos organized and even lets you search them to find the ones that you or specific friends are in,” he adds. “Moments uses facial recognition technology to group your photos based on the friends who are in them. This is the same technology that powers tag suggestions on Facebook. You can control tag suggestions in your Settings.”

Facebook shares a behind-the-scenes look at making the app on its Code blog.

The app comes specifically from Facebook Creative Labs, the group behind Slingshot, Paper, Mentions, Rooms, Groups, Riff, and Hello. You’d be forgiven if you’re not incredibly familiar with most or any of those. None of them have exactly set the world on fire or seen the kind of adoption that other Facebook apps like Messenger, Instagram, or WhatsApp have.

For now, it’s only available in the U.S. on both iOS and Android. It will expand to more countries in time.

Image via Facebook