At this point, everyone considers themselves a Snapchat Pro – a professional selfie taker, a creative genius with a Snapchat pen, and a guru in the fine art of looking good with the old reliable dog filter.
But have you ever considered that maybe – just maaaybe – it could be possible to up your snap game to the next level? I’m talking ‘Kylie Jenner minus the annoying car miming videos’ next level? Here’s 8 tips to do exactly that!
1. Hands-Free Snapping
Ever see someone record videos without holding their thumb down on the screen? Now YOU can be as cool as they think they are! Go to Settings > General > Accessibility, and turn on Assistive Touch so a small dot icon appears on-screen. Then click Create New Gesture and hold your finger down til the blue bar along the bottom maxes out after 10 seconds. Save and name this new gesture as something memorable like ‘Snapchat’.
Now open Snapchat, tap the Assistive Touch icon and find your ‘Snapchat’ gesture under Custom. Select and drag the little black icon onto the Snapchat record button and it should record a 10-second video totally hands-free. Look Mom, no hands!
2. Bitmoji with a Buddy
Bitmojis might just be the best things ever invented. But did you know you can send Bitmoji stickers that feature you AND your friend? Simply double tap on a friend from your Chat list to launch the camera, snap a pic, and explore your Bitmoji stickers to see you and your friend do everything from high-fiving and piggybacking, to dabbing and chilling in a giant hot dog.
Note: Both you and your friend need to have your Bitmoji accounts linked to your Snapchat accounts. If you don’t have a Bitmoji account, simply download the free Bitmoji app from the App or Play Store, create an avatar, and link it to your Snapchat account under ‘Bitmoji’ in your Snapchat Settings.
3. Hidden Pastel Colours
At this stage, we all know our way around the Snapchat pen tool, and that dragging your finger from the palette to the leftmost side of the screen discovers the greyscale pen, right? Well, lucky iOS users have hidden pastel colours in there too.
Hold your finger on the palette to select a colour and slide it directly horizontal to the point juuust before it turns the pen tool white to find a pastel version of your original colour. To find the other pastels, start your finger on a different colour on the palette and slide left as you did before to find pale pink, powder blue, lilac and more!
4. More Detailed Drawings
While we’re on the topic of colour, here’s one for all you dedicated Picassos out there. For once off Snapchat masterpieces, iOS users should go to Settings > General > Accessibility, and enable Zoom. Android users should launch Settings > Accessibility > Vision, and enable Magnification Gestures.
Back in Snapchat with the pen tool selected, you should now be seeing a zoom window you can draw into for more detail. And when you move the window around, your drawing should appear as normal. Goodbye Sausage Fingers. Hello freaky Mona Lisa masterpieces!
(Photo Source: Pinterest – I’m not that good!)
5. Throwback to Old Lenses
Snapchat is constantly rotating in and out old and new lenses, and if your favourite lens is no longer available, have no fear. For iOS users, go to Settings > General > Date & Time, disable the Set Automatically function and simply enter the date that offered the lenses you want. For Android users, go to Settings > Date & Time, disable the Automatic Date & Time function and set the date accordingly. Relaunch Snapchat and hey presto, the lenses of Snapchats past have returned once more!
6. Custom Filters using Emojis
Not a fan of Snapchat’s standard filters and want to create your own? Just get creative with emoji stickers. After you’ve taken a picture, apply an emoji from your stickers menus and keep zooming in and pushing the emoji to the corner til its pixelated, semi-transparent edges covers your whole screen. Try layering multiple emojis as seen below for different effects too! Welcome to the World of Custom Filters, my friend!
7. Custom Borders using Letters
Adding different shaped borders to your photos on Snapchat can really help them look the part. To do this, type a letter (O and U work great – see below!), click the T icon to enlarge it and zoom it out all the way until it creates a border around your snap. Start adding different coloured letters to switch it up too. Instagram Squaready, meet Snapchat Letters.
8. Save Your Data
And finally, and possibly the most useful Snapchat hack of all: if you’re someone who’s forever running out of data, Travel Mode is the way to go. Go to your Snapchat Settings > Manage Preferences, and enable Travel Mode to reduce the amount of mobile data Snapchat uses. Rather than automatically loading snaps, you’ll have to tap to load each one manually – but it’s a small price to pay to keep your data alive and kicking.
And that’s it! Implement these 8 simple tips and you’ll be even more of a Snapchat Guru than you already are! Note the above features are only available for Snapchat updated since 18 November 2016 (Ver 9.43.2.0 on iOS / Ver 9.43.50 on Android).
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See you next week!
Paul
Techrospective 