What is Snapchat?

What is Snapchat?

What is Snapchat?

  • Social media app
  • Used for media sharing and chatting
  • Use on your phone or tablet to live chat with friends or send them short video, text or audio messages which expire after a short time

Key Words:

  • Snap – a short video or image shared between your Snapchat friends
  • Friends – people you have connected Snapchat with
  • Stories – a series of Snaps combined to tell your “story” over a 24 hour period
  • Filters – easy buttons you can modify your Snaps with (including overlays)
  • Memories – your collection of saved Snaps
  • Trophy Case – snapchat awrds trophies when you meet certain achievements like: “Sent 10 Snaps”
  • Snapcode – your Snapchat icon – looks like a yellow ghost.
  • Chat – you

What can I use Snapchat for?

  • Send short videos, photos and text to friends which expire after time
  • Live Video or audio call friends
  • Add overlaid text, clipart or drawing to photos and video
  • Send Snaps to a selection of followers or save to your Story so all can view
  • Your Story is a collection of Snaps saved in chronological order for 24 hours which all your friends can see
  • Snapchat also publishes Stories from some media companies and for some special events
  • You can choose to enable Memories, which now saves your Snaps
  • Snapchat will notify you if someone takes a screenshot of one of your Snaps

How do I use Snapchat?

  • Install on iPhone or Android
  • Create an account
  • Start following friends and contacts
  • Swipe down
  • Click the Add Friends button
  • Allow Snapchat to access your Contacts

Sending Photos

  • Start with sending someone a Photo
  • tap the capture button
  • Click the clock to set a duration
  • Tap the icons top right to add: clipart, Text or to draw on the photo
  • Click the Send button
  • Choose which of your friends to send it to
  • Click Send arrow

 Sending Video

  • Hold the capture button in the red circle grows as the video length does
  • Swipe left or right to add filters (eg. location image, time, temperature, speed, image filters or to slowdown/speedup the video)
  • Tap the screen to add Text
  • Tap the Clipart or Draw icons to add effects
  • Tap the speaker to mute the audio
  • Click the Send button
  • Choose which of your friends to send it to
  • Click Send arrow

Adding face filters to video

  • Long press on the face in the video
  • Swipe through the available filters
  • send

Snapchat ProTips:

  • You can save your Snaps to Memories and keep them
  • Make your Snaps interesting – what would you tell your friends about if they were there?
  • When adding Text, type your text then tap the T icon again to select from additional text features
  • When taking selfie photos Snapchat uses the screen as a front facing flash. Tap the lightning icon in the top left corner to activate
  • Tap the screen twice to switch from front to rear camera
  • Tap the screen to quickly skip through Stories
  • To apply more than one Filter, choose the first, then tap and hold your finger on the screen while swiping to the second filter
  • Secure your account with two step authentication. This means a SMS code will be sent to you when you login and out (not when you open and close) the app
  • Add extra Text to Snaps by creating in Notes and copying/pasting into the text box in Snapchat
  • Turn on Travel Mode to save data – Swipe Down > Settings > Manage > Travel Mode – turn on
  • When adding Friends try “Add Nearby” – if everyone opens Add Nearby they will be visible
  • Also, take a photo of the persons Snapcode and use that to add them
  • Personalise your Snapcode. Swipe down, tap the Snapcode, tap the capture button and Snapchat will capture 5 images as an animation to use in your Snapcode

Security and Privacy:

  • Keep default settings of who can contact you as Friends
  • You can Block users
  • Third party apps can be used by others to save Snaps they’ve received – Snapcrack

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