No, we won’t show you how to hack into someone’s Snapchat account. Instead, you’ll learn some useful Snapchat hacks and tips that will help you step up your Snap game.
We all can agree that the photo- and video-messaging app Snapchat is not the most user-friendly app out there. You probably have been using it for a while, but you may not know its most awesome features.
Although teenagers and young people widely use Snapchat, it can be pretty hard to learn how to use it. Most of its best features are not obvious; you’ll have to dig into the settings menu to find them.
Regardless of your category, this guide will teach you how to access Snapchat’s hidden features. You’ll also learn a few more tricks that will help you polish your snaps and transform them into works of art. Without further ado, let’s get started.
10 Best Snapchat Hacks
1. Change the color of individual words and letters
Tired of your boring caption? Did you know you can get each word and letter in a sentence to have a different color? Let’s spice it up with some fun colors. Here’s how you do that.
Type your caption and tap on the “T” at the top of the screen next to the draw tool. This will make your text bigger and bolder. Now, select a word or an individual letter in your text.
Tap the select option to highlight the word or letter and change its color by dragging your finger up and down over the color palette on your left.
2. Find celebrities and official accounts
Finding people to follow on Snapchat is not the most intuitive thing. It’s even more difficult to find celebrities since many of them don’t even use their real name in their username. But there’s a way to easily find celebrities and other official verified accounts.
Open the app, tap on the story icon in the lower-left corner, or swipe left to access the “Stories” page. Next, type in the word “official” in the search bar. A list of official accounts will appear. Feel free to follow the ones you like.
Another way you can find celebrities in the search bar is with emojis. For example, when you type the soccer ball emoji, it will bring up Official Stories from both leagues and individual teams that use that emoji.
You should note that the “Official” search results will change daily based on who has posted a story that day.
3. Recognize songs with Shazam integration
Did you know you can shazam songs in the Snapchat app? Snapchat works with multiple companies such as Shazam, Uber, etc to bring you cool features.
To identify a song playing around you, hold your finger down on the camera screen. After a few seconds, a pop-up box will appear with more info, including the artist, title, and lyrics.
From there, you’ll have the option to listen to the song either on Apple Music, Spotify, or the music streaming service of your choice. You can also send the song to your Snapchat contacts or share it with third-party apps.
4. Add a link to your story
Not too long ago, Snapchat let users include a link in their stories. This was a real game-changing for website owners, creators, and marketers. It’s pretty easy to do that.
To add a link to your story, just take a picture or video, tap the paperclip on the sidebar, and enter your URL. Your audience will only need to swipe up to see the content of your snap without leaving the app.
Note: If you use a photo or video from the camera roll of your phone, you’ll need to tap on the three vertical dots to edit it first before you can see the link icon from the draw tool.
5. Turn your snap into stickers with the scissors tool
You can cut part of your snaps with the scissors tool and use them later as stickers. It’s pretty easy to do, but most people don’t really use this tool.
Once you take your snaps, tap the scissor icon on the upper right bar. Then, outline the part of your snap you want to turn into a sticker.
Snapchat will save those stickers to the sticker menu under the scissor tab. You can resize and move them wherever you want on the Snap.
Make sure to edit your snap before you create the sticker. Any edits you make on your new snap will not transfer to the sticker.
6. Send money to your friends
Like Facebook Messenger, you can use Snapchat to send and receive money to any Snapchat user using a feature called Snapcash.
Snapcash works similarly to sending money with Apple Pay. The steps below will show you how.
Head over to Settings > Snapcash and add a debit card. To send money to someone, just type the amount you’d like to send in the chat window.
Remember that you need to add the dollar sign first ($), without it, the money won’t be sent. Other currencies don’t work with that feature at the moment.
Snapchat may introduce other currencies in the future. But for now, you can only send US dollars with Snapcash.
7. Create snapcode for your website
Snapcodes are not only for users to add to each other. You can use Snapcodes to send people to your website if you own one.
To do that, open up the app and tap the ghost icon in the upper left of the camera screen. Tap Settings in the upper right, then Snapcodes > Create Snapcode.
Now, you can enter the URL of your website (like gotechtor.com) and tap create. Once you’re done, it will create a Snapcode that will link to your website.
8. Make voice or video Calls
Like most social media apps, you can use Snapchat for voice and video calls. That’s pretty obvious since you can find it right in the chat window.
However, most Snapchatters use the app for posting disappearing pictures and may not notice that at all.
You can either send a short voice note or call the person to start a live video call. To send a short voice note, hold down the voice or video icon, and it will start recording right away. To start a live voice or video call, just tap the voice or video icon.
9. Save battery life and data
Snapchat is fun and great but will drain your battery life and data more than any other app. However, there is a way to prevent that: Travel Mode.
Travel Mode is a built-in feature that allows you to disable snaps and stories to load automatically.
To turn on travel mode, go to Settings, scroll down a bit, tap Manage under the Additional Service tab, and toggle Travel Mode on. It will save you tons of data and significantly improve your battery life.
Want pro tips to save battery life on your phone? You should check our guides on iPhone battery-saving tips and Android battery-saving tips.
10. Enable Ghost Mode
Snapchat, by default, records your location when you use the app, whether you’re sharing a snap or stories. It is essential for some features to work like geo-filters. If you don’t want your friends to know your location, you can turn on the Ghost Mode.
- To do that, open the app and tap your profile picture at the top left corner of the screen. Then, scroll down to find the Snap Map section and select it.
- It will bring up a map with your current location selected. To enable Ghost Mode, tap the ⚙️ button at the top-right corner of the Map screen.
- Toggle ON the switch right next to Ghost Mode. You can also set a timer when you enable Ghost Mode.
Bonus:
- Double-tap anywhere on the camera screen will switch between the front-facing and rear-facing cameras.
- When recording, slide your finger up and down the screen to zoom in and out, respectively.
- Use the volume buttons to take a photo or record a video on Snapchat. You press once or hold either volume button to take a photo or record a video, respectively. It works the same as your phone’s default camera app.
Wrapping Up
If you know some Snapchat hacks, tips, and tricks that we missed and should have been on this guide, please do let us know in the comment section below.
Having trouble downloading Snapchat? You should check our guide for tips when Snapchat won’t download on your iPhone.
Missing notifications? Here’s what to do when Snapchat notifications are not working on Android.
