Unsplash Instant 2
During one of our Make Days, Charles and I thought it would be cool to make a Google Chrome extension for Unsplash. The idea was simple: every time you’d open a new tab, you’d see a random hi-res photo from Unsplash’s collection of 30,000+ (at the time) photos. Not only it would make your new tabs beautiful, but it would also give more exposure to the photographers who have contributed their photos on Unsplash. Bonus: you could directly download the photos to your computer.
Here’s how it went down:
Once we were done and it was live on the Chrome Store, we shared it with the rest of our teammates and sent out our usual Make Day tweets. One thing that we noticed while working on the extension was that it caught us by surprise every single time we’d open a new tab. It was awesome.
And looks like we weren’t alone:
Fast forward to today, and our little extension is being used by more than 50,000 people. The feedback that we’ve received has been nothing but positive. During the year, we’ve committed to improve Instant and fix any bugs that have been reported on the Chrome Store.
Aside from bugs, one of our biggest requests has been Likes. The truth is, it’s something that we’ve been meaning to implement since day 1, but unfortunately due to technical constraints, it hasn’t been possible… until last week.
Today, we’re really excited to introduce a brand new Unsplash Instant. It has been re-written from the ground up with a couple of nifty new features:
- overhaul of the visual design (similar to our new photo page, it’s lighter and more open)
- all new vetted photos (there’s a new collection it pulls from)
- share photos with friends via Facebook or Twitter
- optimized to load faster
- last but not least, the most requested feature: ❤ Likes (have to be logged into your Unsplash account)
Please note: Unsplash Instant 2 requires new permissions, so if you have the old version of the extension installed you’ll need to re-enable it in your extensions by going to: chrome://extensions/ in your address bar or by going to Chrome ▸ Preferences ▸ Extensions
Here’s a quick demo of how Likes work:
If you still haven’t installed Instant, we invite you all to try it and hopefully your new tabs will be a little brighter :)