Now Periscope Auto-Saves Your Broadcasts By Default

Periscope has turned on auto-saving broadcasts, updating the video live-streaming app so that clips no longer delete after 24 hours. The functionality was promised earlier this month, a considerable about-face from the service which had, until now, prioritized ephemerality over building up a library of old broadcasts.

That behavior has been credited for helping boost the Twitter-owned service into more mainstream use, with users arguably more willing to experiment with Periscope if they knew their testing wouldn't linger around to potentially embarrass them later.

However, with Facebook Live – the rival service that allows Facebook users to stream their own video to their pages on the social network – courting advertisers with the promise that the videos they carefully staged wouldn't disappear after a day, a change in strategy for Periscope seemed inevitable.

Sure enough, that the case today with the new update for Periscope available for smartphones. The company ran a temporary trial with a workaround system, where appending "#save" to the title of a stream would flag to the service that it should be stored for longer, but now that's no longer necessary.

Still, if you preferred the old style of video expiration, that's still an option. Open up the settings in Periscope and you'll find a toggle to turn back on "Auto-Delete after 24hr"

Should you forget to do that, or prefer to deal with videos on a broadcast-by-broadcast basis, you can individually delete any saved clips after streaming has done or by going to your profile page.

It's one of a number of changes Periscope has put in place over the past weeks to try to broaden the appeal of the service. Streaming support for DJI drones, for instance, allows broadcasters to take the live video from their UAV and show people in real-time, complete with support for on-screen annotations that allow you to note flight plans or areas of interest.

Meanwhile, there are new search categories designed to make it easier for new users to get to grips with Periscope, as well as to surface live and saved content more effectively.

You can find the updated versions of the Periscope app in the App Store and Google Play today.