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.

Nevertheless, activating astrophotography mode in the updated Pixel Camera app is pretty easy:

1. Launch the camera app and swipe to the Night Sight mode.
2. Tap the duration icon and then adjust the resulting slider from “auto” to the new “Astro” option (to the right of “Max”).
3. You’ll then have a five-second timer by default before the astrophotography mode starts capturing exposures.

In other words, you can now activate astro mode via the slider normally used to adjust the capture time for Night Sight images.

The five-second timer can be adjusted (to three seconds or 10 seconds) or even disabled by visiting the Night Sight settings page. It’s also worth noting that the old method of activating astro mode is still available. That means launching the Night Sight mode in the Pixel Camera app, placing your phone on a stable surface or tripod, and waiting for the shutter button to display a star icon.

We’re glad Google now offers a way to manually activate astrophotography mode, even if it’s still not a discrete mode in the Pixel Camera app. Nevertheless, I’d definitely like to see a handheld astro mode in the near future as this is already a thing on some Chinese flagship phones.