Holidays and special occasions are always a good time to catch up with friends and family. A few decades ago, we used to send them greeting cards by regular mail, then came email, and now we have a lot of instant messaging apps that help us record a spontaneous video to share with them. If you use Google Duo to talk with your loved ones, you can now add a bit of Halloween and Diwali flair to your pre-recorded video messages.

Open Duo, swipe down to record a message, and tap on the Effects button on the right. You'll get two Halloween effects then a Diwali one, followed by the six default others.

For Halloween, you can pick between a pumpkin scarecrow and a haunted house, whereas the Diwali effect is gold, classy, and sparkly.

The effects should show up without a need for a new app version, but they may be geo-restricted. On my end, I see none of them, whereas Artem and our tipster Nick have all three in the US.

Thanks: Nick Ciprian, Jan