Imagine your older self reliving the good old days by sharing Snapchat videos with all your old buddies. You’d all laugh at the foolish things you did or marvel that you were ever that young. It would be a great way to indulge in some group nostalgia.
But sharing old video and photo memories captured on Snapchat has never been possible.
That’s because, as we all know, Snapchat videos are only temporary, allowing you a mere fleeting glimpse into the moments of your and your friends’ lives. Snaps disappear within seconds, or if they’re saved as Stories, up to 24 hours.
But all that changed one summer when Snapchat rolled out Memories. And what’s that?
Let’s find out.
What is Memories in Snapchat?
Snapchat memories is Snapchat’s way of giving users permanent access to the snaps and photos they want to keep. Now you can relive your finest Snapchat moments over and over again.
Thanks to this new feature, you can also send saved Snaps to your friends, even if those Snaps were taken forever ago. Sure, you’ve been saving your Stories on your phone, but what happens when your storage is full? Or worse yet, what happens when you lose your phone? Your Snapchat Stories are gone forever!
Not anymore, though.
With Memories, your snap is saved on Snapchat servers, accessible from any device, and safe from the inherent dangers of only keeping it locally. And yes, you could have in the past been saving your Snaps somewhere on the Cloud for multi-device access, but that’s clunky when you want to share or view them again.
Plus, saving to a non-Snapchat cloud server means you’re dependent on a third-party for all your memories. Now, viewing, saving, sharing, sending, and curating your Snaps will be far easier since it can all be done within the Snapchat app.
Why did Snapchat create Memories?
In the past, the only way to permanently save videos and photos was to use a third-party app. When Snapchat realized this was taking users out of Snapchat and into other apps, they realized this missed-out loophole.
One of the primary goals of app developers is to keep users inside their app for as long as possible. The longer they remain in the app engaged, the better chance the app owner has of achieving some end goal.
At first, Snapchat didn’t even give the capability for users to save their Snaps in their Camera Rolls. However, once they made this possible, they realized this still wasn’t enough for Snapchatters, who loved their Snaps so much that they wanted to share them again and again well into the future.
So, Snapchat created Memories.
What’s the coolest thing about Snapchat Memories?
Before we get to how to use Memories, here’s one more thing you should know. It’s something almost nobody is talking about, yet it’s perhaps the most incredible aspect of Memories. You can search your memories using time, location, or keyword search.
The keyword search is powered by object recognition software, which is actually one of the most exciting features for Snapchat users.
Let’s say you’ve been saving Memories for a year now. You’re at a family reunion, and you want to show everyone the Snap you saved that shows your dog performing an amazing feat. Having no idea when you shot the Snap, you can type “dog” into the keyword search feature, and all your Snaps containing dogs will appear.
If you had enabled the locations while you shot a Snap, you could also narrow things down by searching for the location, if you can remember it. This means you can view every Snap you ever took in Mexico in 2013 of tacos, provided the object recognition has learned to recognize “tacos” by now.
How to use Snapchat Memories?
Ready to give Memories a try? Here’s how to use Memories so you can save, curate, and share your posts forever.
1. Get Your Phone Ready
First, you’ll want to make sure your Snapchat app is actually ready for the Memories feature. That means updating the app. Once the newest version is installed, it’s then a toss-up of whether your account has access or not. That’s because Memories is being rolled out to users in waves.
You’ll know your account is ready for Memories because you will receive a snap from the folks at Snapchat telling you about it.
2. Making Memories
If you’ve been using Snapchat, the way you save your Snaps hasn’t changed. Take a Snap, then tap the down arrow at the bottom of the screen. Your Snap is now saved to Memories forever on Snapchat servers.
Before the launch of the Memories feature, tapping that down arrow meant you were saving the Snap to your Camera Roll.
3. Accessing the Memories Screen
To access Memories, log into Snapchat and swipe up from the main screen. You’ll then see a screen that says Welcome to Memories. Then you will be asked if you want to import your saved Snaps.
The reason you’ll need to import Memories is either to send them to your friends or to save them in your current Story. In other words, saving Snaps as Memories does not put them into your Story. You’ll have to do that manually by importing them from Memories.
4. Import a Memory
Think of Memories as items that are in deep storage. If you want to send them or make them accessible through your Story, you’ll need to import them.
Saving your Snaps has always been possible. The Snapchat app used to put them into the Camera Roll on your phone. So, when the Memories feature asks you if you want to import Snaps (to send or put in your Story), that’s one of the places it will go to find things to import.
On the import screen, you’ll see two tabs at the top: Snaps and Camera Roll. Choose where you want to import from.
If you don’t have any saved Snaps, Memories go to your Camera Roll anyway. From there, you could choose to import photos that were taken with your camera and send to your friends or put them in your Story, even if you were outside the Snapchat app when you took them.
5. Select what you want to do with your Memories
In the upper right-hand corner, you’ll see a checkbox. If you tap that, you can select multiple items to import. Make your selections, and then you have another choice:
- Tap the big arrow at the bottom right of the screen to send to a friend or to “My Story”.
- Tap the lock symbol, and your selections are saved to “My Eyes Only”.
>- Tap the share link symbol and choose your selections via other apps, like Email, YouTube, Google Drive, or OneDrive.
- Tap the Stories symbol (a circle with a +) and make a Story out of your selections.
- Tap the trash can icon to delete the selections from Memories.
6. Making new Stories from your old Memories
We’ve mentioned that curating will now be easier with Memories. One way this works is to create new stories using Snaps from all your Memories.
For this, follow these steps:
- Access Memories, then tap the upper right-hand corner box.
- That box puts you into the Select mode.
- Select the Memories you want to collect into a single Story.
- Then tap the circle at the bottom of your screen, the one with the plus sign embedded.
Now in your collection of Memories, you’ll see a new addition. That’s your new saved Story, and it’s now a Memory.
Final Tidbits
In essence, Memories will save your Snaps and Stories on Snapchat servers rather than your phone.
Why should you care? Because it means old Snaps and Stories can now be shared from within the Snapchat app, anytime in the future, forever. It also means it’s all accessible from other devices, too.
Apart from memories, the platform has many other out-of-box features that can come in handy in using Snapchat for business endeavors.
Finally, the Memories feature is optional. Turn it off within your Snapchat settings in the Saving section. There, you can set defaults like saving to Camera Roll Only and other customization like saving everything to the My Eyes Only area. That’s pretty much about it.
