How Does Snapchat Work? (Quick Guide)

What Is Snapchat and How Does It Work?

Snapchat is a popular mobile messaging app that lets you share photos, videos, and messages with friends. It has over 293 million daily active users worldwide.

What makes Snapchat unique compared to other social media platforms is that the content you share disappears after viewing. You can send a photo or video "snap" to a friend, and they‘ll only be able to view it for 1-10 seconds before it deletes itself.

This ephemeral nature allows you to share fun, silly, or casual moments without worrying about it sticking around forever. Many people use Snapchat to give their friends a behind-the-scenes look into their daily lives.

Getting Started with Snapchat

To start using Snapchat, the first step is to download the app from the iOS App Store or Android Google Play Store.

Once you‘ve downloaded and installed the app, you‘ll need to create an account. You can sign up with your email or phone number and create a username and password.

After your account is set up, you can start adding friends. To become friends with someone, you both need to add each other. You can search for people by username or scan their unique Snapcode.

Now you‘re ready to start snapping!

Core Features of Snapchat

Snapchat has a variety of features that make sharing photos and videos, communicating, and staying entertained easy and fun. Let‘s explore the main screens and capabilities.

Camera

The camera screen is the main screen you‘ll see when you first open Snapchat. Here, you can take a photo or video to share with friends. There are also options to add filters, lenses or special effects.

Filters add overlays and fun elements to your snaps. Lenses use augmented reality to add effects like animals, facial distortions and more. Bitmojis are personalized avatars you can add to your images.

Chatting

In the chat screen, you can send text-based messages, snap photos or videos, audio notes, stickers and more to friends. You can also make voice and video calls for real-time communication.

To start chatting, simply select a friend‘s name from your list of friends in Snapchat. This will open your message thread with them.

You can also chat in groups by creating or joining a group chat with multiple friends.

Stories

With stories, you can share snaps that appear together in a slideshow. Stories stay visible for 24 hours before disappearing.

When you add snaps to your Story, all your friends in Snapchat can view them. You can also view your friends‘ stories to see what they‘ve been up to.

Stories are a fun way to provide little video and photo updates throughout your day without spamming all your friends individually.

Snap Map

Snap Map lets you see your friends‘ locations on a map in real-time. This gives you insight into where your friends are and what they‘re up to.

You can choose to share your location with all your friends, select friends, or turn it off completely if you‘d rather keep your location private. You can also view public snaps submitted to Our Story based on events happening around the world.

Snap Map is a handy tool for meeting up with friends or getting an inside look at events going on in different places.

Memories

Memories allow you to save your favorite or most meaningful snaps, stories, and messages in Snapchat for future viewing. You can access Memories by swiping up from the camera screen.

Saved snaps, videos or entire stories will be stored in Memories until you decide to delete them. This gives you the flexibility to revisit special moments even after they disappear from Snapchat.

You can also edit old snaps and upload them as new ones. Memories make it easy to hold onto your favorite Snapchat moments.

Discover

Discover allows you to explore video and article content from top publishers like ESPN, Cosmopolitan, News Break and more. You can access Discover by swiping right from the camera screen.

Discover offers a fun way to view curated content like news reports, cooking tutorials, movie trailers and more. You can subscribe to your favorite channels to easily keep watching the types of content you like.

Additional Snapchat Features

Beyond the basics, Snapchat has some extra features that enhance your messaging experience in unique ways:

Snapstreaks

A snapstreak occurs when you and a friend have snapped (messaged) each other at least once per day for three consecutive days. Little flame icons appear next to streaking friends‘ names, along with the number of days you‘ve kept your streak going.

Snapstreaks make communicating on Snapchat into a fun game and motivate you to keep snapping with your top friends regularly.

Snap Games

Snapchat now offers a variety of games you can play with your friends. These include traditional mobile games like Bitmoji Party as well as Snapchat-specific games like Send Food Fight!.

To access Snap Games, open your Snapchat Chat with a friend and tap on the rocket ship icon. Some games are also advertised on Snapchat‘s Discover screen.

Games provide another way to interact and have fun with friends right within Snapchat.

Group Chats

Snapchat allows messaging in groups through the Group Chat feature. You can start a group chat with up to 32 friends and send messages, snaps, video call and more.

To make a group, go to the Chat screen and tap "New Group". Type in the names of the friends you want to include. Once created, all members will be able to chat!

Group chats make chatting, sharing and hanging out easy even with bigger groups of friends.

Managing Your Snapchat Account

There are a few things to keep in mind when managing your Snapchat account and privacy:

Settings

In Settings, you can manage options like notification preferences, memories settings, password changes, linked accounts and more.

Settings is also where you‘ll find privacy controls like who can see your location, contact info, whether your profile is public or private, and deleting your account.

Adding & Removing Friends

You can add more friends in Snapchat by tapping the + icon or scanning Snapcodes. To delete friends, swipe to go to your Friends page from the Chat tab and tap "Manage Friends".

It‘s important to prune friends who you no longer talk to in order to maintain privacy.

Understanding Icons

Snapchat uses special icons and emojis to indicate different account statuses:

💛 Yellow Heart – You‘re best friends with each other
❤️ Red Heart – You‘ve been best friends for 2+ weeks
🔥 Fire – You have a snapstreak going
⌛ Hourglass – Your snapstreak is about to expire

Keep an eye out for these icons so you know what‘s going on in your friendships on Snapchat!

Key Takeaways

Snapchat makes sharing photos, videos and messages easy, fun and spontaneous. Key things to remember:

• Snaps disappear after being viewed once, telling a visual story in the moment.
• Features like lenses, filters, stickers and more let you enhance your snaps.
• Stories show a collection of your snaps from the last 24 hours.
• Chat allows messaging friends in 1-on-1 or group conversations.
• Memories lets you save favorite snaps and stories to your account.
• Snap Map lets you share your location in real-time and see where friends are.

Overall, Snapchat delivers a unique and lively messaging experience unlike any other social network. Try it out to stay connected with friends in new ways!