Google now lets you manually activate astrophotography mode in the latest version of the Pixel Camera app.
Astro mode can now be activated via the Night Sight duration slider.
Previously, astrophotography mode could only be triggered by the viewfinder being dark enough in Night Sight mode.
Google Pixel phones were the first to offer an astrophotography mode, letting you take hitherto unprecedented images of the night sky. One notable downside is that you couldn’t actually activate this mode manually, but that’s changing this week.
The Google News Telegram channel spotted the ability to manually activate astrophotography mode in version 9.5.118 of the Pixel Camera app. Unfortunately, this update isn’t available on the Google Play Store just yet, but you can grab it via APKMirror as a split APK bundle. If you’re not experienced with sideloading then we suggest waiting for the updated app to arrive on the Play Store.