I found the interface of Snapchat to be less than intuitive and I had to read a couple of different articles online about how to use it. Here’s my synopsis for the Snapping newbie:
How to create a Snap:
1. Tap the big button once on the main screen to take a photo, tap and hold to take a video.
2. Once you’ve done that, swipe right to find the skin you want to use (I’ve seen the time skin be used to show a “day in the life” of someone, you can use one of the different filter skins to lighten up weird lighting, black and white, or geotag it).
Sometimes there are special skins for holidays! I love when it accidentally matches my outfit. Also if you are on a nude beach and need to delete stuff, or take a video of your computer with your email open, you can use the little pen icon to cover up stuff you don’t want to share!
3. Tap once on the little pen icon to use a colored marker to draw on your creation—helpful to draw arrows. You can select different colors. You can even use different colors in the same creation. Tap the little pen again to stop drawing mode.
Devon Divine is all things awesome!
4. Tap the T icon to type in text. Tap the T again to toggle between this little bar that runs across the photo, to have right aligned bigger text or to have center aligned bigger text. Change colors on the side with the color selector. Use your fingers to squeeze or expand to change size of the text. (Pro tip: On iphones if you want to paste in a longer passage than snapchat allows you can copy paste. My android doesn’t support paste in Snapchat.)
Mal Blum is amazing (I loooove all of their work, and it just keeps getting better as they develop as a singer/songwriter and add live bands) and also they’re going on tour!
5. Tap the little post-it note to insert emojis. So much whimsical opportunity there with floating cheeseburger emoji.
6. Clickie the bottom right arrow to publish the snap. It can go directly to friends by selecting their names, or you can publish to “My Story” for it to go live for 24 hours. You need to go into your settings to verify that you want it to be available to the public at large, you can also only have it go to your friends.
How to add folks on Snapchat:
Two main ways—search by username, or if you find someone’s little Snapchat ghost icon you can take a photo of that while in the photo screen on snapchat and it adds them automatically.
This is my “I’m trying to figure out this new feature on Snapchat” face that happened when my last update installed and they started taking selfies inside the little ghost figure. I’m 36, I’m pretty up on technology but Snapchat is so not intuitive it makes me a little bananas.
More stuff that I’ve found helpful to know about Snapchat:
*Messages self destruct after a certain period of time, and if someone takes a screen shot Snapchat alerts you.
*If you want to click through photos (ie before the time is up on the photo) or videos you can tap once to skip to the next video/photo in the story.
*If you love something you’ve posted to Snapchat you can download it. I have found it makes the Instagram video posting interface so much easier now on my Android.