Photo-editing app VSCO is turning off its sync feature today

Almost two years ago, the popular photo-editing and sharing app VSCO released a big iOS update that, among other things, brought the app to the iPad. At the same time, VSCO added a sync feature: if you imported a photo into your VSCO library and made edits on your iPhone, the same photo and edits would appear on your iPad (and vice versa). It was a handy feature, letting you make changes on the iPad's big screen while sending them to the iPhone for easy sharing to apps like Instagram. However, as of today, that sync feature is going away.

VSCO announced the change with an email to users a few weeks ago, but today is doomsday for the feature. At the moment, sync appears to be working, albeit in limited fashion. I've been able to import photos into my VSCO library on both my iPad and iPhone and have edits stay in sync. That'll probably disappear before long, however, so don't necessarily rely on it. The good news is that none of your images will be deleted and there's an "export all" feature to save them to your camera roll. But if you delete the app from a device, those images and edits will be gone for good, so make sure they're backed up somewhere.

Despite the quality of VSCO's edits, the app has always been a little confusing, so removing sync might actually make for an easier experience in some regard. And while the experience of making edits on one device and having them appear on another was nice, you can always export your edited photos to the camera roll and have the same image appear on another device thanks to iCloud's photo library or Google Photos. Given the amount of photo syncing and backup options out there, it does make sense for VSCO to stay firmly focused on editing.

VSCO also recently pushed out a visual redesign in the iPhone app, but most of those changes haven't come to the iPad yet -- maybe as the company removes its sync feature, it'll put the apps back on par from a visual standpoint.