Snap India announces ‘Lens on the Year’ to recap AR hits of 2021: Check out the most popular lenses

Snap India has announced ‘Lens on the Year’ to honour some of the most innovative technologies applied by the company to Augmented Reality (AR) over the year, as per the press release. A number of Lenses were declared to be the favourite of the users, reflecting the trends, cultural moments, festivals celebrated by the Snap India community in the country. Here are some of the most popular Lenses of the year:

• Happy Diwali! by Snap: With the theme of ‘Share your Light’, This special Lens allows Snapchatters to share Diya with their loved ones. The Lens recognises user’s hand and places a lit Diya on the palm. This popular Diwali Lens gained over 200 million impressions in India.
• Happy Raksha Bandhan! by Snap: The Lens, with wrist recognition tech, allows user to tie a Rakhi virtually on the wrist and share any message with their siblings.
• Sparkling Hand (Holi) by Snap: These special Lenses enabled Snapchatters to throw colours, show before and after Holi looks and share messages for the festive occasion with their loved ones.
• My Friend Is (Friendship Day) by Snap: Using this Lens, users can share fun characteristics about their friends.
• Gudi Padwa, Onam, Makar Sankranti by Snap: With this Lens user could share their New Year greeting for Gudi Padwa suing the festive themed AR while for Onam, users could share the traditional Sandhya served on the holiday using the Onam Lenses.

Snapchatters also celebrated festivals like Eid, Guru Nanak Jayanti, and Rath Yatra by using popular AR Lenses designed for the purpose. Here’s a list of some of the creative tools by Snap that were most popular this year:

• India Gate Landmarker by Snap: With this Lens, users can see the Indian National Flag through the India Gate when they point Snapchat app to scan the India Gate. The tool was developed for the occasion of India’s 75th Independence Day.
• Mood Octopus Lens: With this Lens people can swap the colour of Octopus toy to express their mood without saying anything
• Teeth Lens: Developed in a partnership with the Kapil Sharma Show, the Lens featured the comedy show host launching a new character to interview the celebrities invited to his show.

Some of the Lenses that went viral this year:

• Gold Chain Lens: Indian traditional jewelry Lenses with sunglasses were popular throughout the year in the country.
• Indian Traditional Jewelry: The Lens allows users to virtually try gold necklaces, earring jhumkas, nose rings, and more.
• Learn Language: With this Lens, users can highlight their local language translation by identifying objects through Machine Learning.
• 3D Cartoon by Snap: With this Lens, Snapchatters can turn themselves into a cartoon character.

Several branded Lenses were also extremely popular on Snap this year, including a body tracking and the Star Sports Lenses.

• Feels like ISHQ by Netflix: The Love Prediction Lens, which follows the plot of the series, appears as a crystal bowl and predicts unusual situations and places in which users can find love and romance.
• Mix It Up: The first body tracking Lens in the country allows users to capture themselves by swapping the lower half of their bodies with humourous alternatives.
• DilFilmySunoFilmy by Spotify: The first Lens of the music streaming service allows users to enter and chose three Spotify playlist genres to walk into virtually and get a glimpse.
• Star Sports by Snap: The Lens uses volume detection and upper body skin segmentation technology to detect how loudly the user is cheering for the Indian cricket team, and trigger the skin to turn blue in the Lens.