Candid camera: Google+ adds Capture app to Hangouts

If you got all dolled up or totally dorked out for your Google+ Hangout, you might as well have a good snapshot to remember the video chat session by. Now, instead of awkwardly trying to take a screenshot, you can use a new Google+ Hangout application called Capture to preserve your candid moments.

Announced today, Capture adds a camera button to Google+ Hangouts, the group video chat and broadcast tool that's a part of the search company's social network. A click of the button will capture your view of the Hangout in progress and save the shot to a shared album. This particular photo album is only visible to other invited Hangout participants and is accessible during or after the broadcast.

"The challenge, oftentimes, is capturing your favorite moments as they happen," Google+ software engineer Jeremy Ng wrote in a Google+ post announcing the new application. "With [Capture] you can take pictures of your Hangouts-in-progress, including a number of features not available in the usual screenshot workarounds."

One of those features happens to be the ability to keep tabs on when your fellow Hangout participants are using the snapshot tool. Ng said that you will always know when Capture is in use, which means you'll know whenever a picture is taken.

Capture isn't a revolutionary addition to the Google+ experience, but the new feature underscores the sentimental side of the video chat feature, and provides people, regular or famous, with a way to archive their favorite moments. The snapshot tool should also play nicely with Google Glass-initiated Hangouts, once the glasses become more widely available. We suspect that early adopters of the outrageous, always-connected spectacles will want to document practically everything they see through their futuristic lens, video chats included.

The Hangouts Capture app is being rolled out to members and will soon be available worldwide, Google said.