UPDATE: Periscope for Android is now live on Google Play. The app requires Android 4.4 or higher and includes tablet support. You can download Periscope for Android right here.
After promising in early April that Periscope for Android was coming “soon,” Twitter today is following through on that promise.
Periscope, Twitter’s livestreaming app, is launching on Android today. Just like the iOS app that’s been available for two months, Periscope for Android will let you broadcast video of whatever you’d like to your followers as well as view both recent and ongoing broadcasts.
The good news for Android users is that the Periscope app for Android isn’t just a straight up port of the iOS version. There are some Android-specific features in the app, like a big red broadcast button that’s in the design of a floating action button, which fits in with Google’s Material Design aesthetic. On iOS, that broadcast button is a tab at the bottom of the screen. Another Android feature is that if you jump away from a Periscope broadcast into another app, you’ll get a notification in your app drawer that’ll get you right back to the broadcast that you were watching.
The livestreaming craze was iOS-only earlier this year, with neither Meerkat nor Periscope available on any other mobile platform. That’s changed now that we’re in late May, though, with Meerkat leaving beta at the start of the month and Twitter’s Periscope launching at the end of May. While it’s kind of a bummer that these apps didn’t hit Android on the same day as iOS, the good news is that they’re finally here, which ought to be exciting for iOS users too since they’ll now have even more broadcasts to watch.
Periscope for Android will be available right here, though it’s worth noting that the app doesn’t appear to be live in Google Play quite yet.