An enterprising developer has created a Google Glass app that allows users to take photos by winking. The app uses functionality discovered in the Google Glass code last week that appears not to be enabled by default.

The app, named Winky, works by rearranging the priority of the wink gesture within a user build. Google Glass comes with the wink gesture disabled within a user build and will tell itself to discount any wink gestures that it sees. "I wound up decompiling some of the code that was on the Glass devices and investigating there. I found that the wink gesture is disabled by default and only engineering or test builds seem like they would have the option to enable it," Winky’s developer, Mike DiGiovanni, told Ars.

DiGiovanni writes that Winky “intercept[s] the wink with a higher priority than anything else,” allowing users to use the gesture to snap a photo. "I was really excited to try and get this working and wasn't sure when or if Google would ever publicly release it since they did appear to try to keep it locked up," DiGiovanni said of the wink gesture.

DiGiovanni notes that either tapping a button or voicing a command for Glass to take a picture can be a “context switch” that can "ruin" the moment (Google’s own Eric Schmidt has expounded on the weirdness and lack of social integration that a product like Google Glass has). DiGiovanni asserts that he has taken many more photos using the feature, allowing his feed to become “truly... a timeline of where I’ve been.”

Winky is available as source code at Github for owners of the Explorer Edition of Google Glass, and DiGiovanni posted a video of the feature in action. Regular customers won’t get access to the headsets until next year.