• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 14, 2015

To sync their mobile pictures, Facebook users will soon be forced to download a separate Moments app.

The change -- which will mean no more syncing on Facebook’s flagship app -- should go into effect in early January, TechCrunch reports.

Since its debut in 2012, auto-syncing has enabled mobile users to store their snaps in Facebook albums. Launched this past summer, Facebook’s Moments app automatically creates albums of users and their friends with the help of proprietary face-recognition technology.

The change is likely to frustrate many Facebook members who would rather not have to download multiple apps in order to access features that were previously available on Facebook’s core app.

That was the case when Facebook asked more than 1 billion users to install its messaging service as a separate app, last year. At the time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that was a “big ask.”

By any measure, however, the Messenger gamble has paid off. For the first time, Facebook’s Messenger app recently surpassed Google’s YouTube app in popularity, according to comScore.

Like a number of other experimental apps, Moments is a byproduct of Facebook’s Creative Labs. Other recent inventions to come out of Creative Labs include a caller-ID and business directory app named “Hello,” and Riff -- an app that allows friends to collaborate on the creation of short-form video.

Taken together, the apps are part of an effort by Facebook to embed itself more deeply into consumers’ mobile lives.

Some in the industry have portrayed Facebook’s app diversification efforts as highly defensive.

In particular, “Messenger is Facebook’s answer to the growing concern of the younger generation abandoning Facebook, the social network, for messaging apps like Snapchat,” Greg Ratner, director of technology at Deep Focus, recently told Mobile Marketing Daily.

Facebook did not return requests for comment by press time.