Snapchat is an app built on the whole concept of missing out if you don’t engage immediately — so if you don’t see a message within a limited time frame, it’s gone.
All your friends will be talking about it and you’ll be out of the loop. It’s either a limited time frame or the one-view policy that chat messages have.
Snapchat Chat Settings: 24hrs
But Snapchat is changing things a bit with chat messages. Users now have the option to allow messages to have a one-time view limit or to allow them to be viewed multiple times for 24 hours.
Here’s how you can choose when messages expire on Snapchat.
Expire Message On Snapchat
This is a new feature available on both iOS and Android. It deals with private chat messages that are exchanged between users.
Know that this is set on a per-person basis which means you can allow some friends to view a message only once while allowing others to view it as many times as you want for 24 hours.
- Open Snapchat and tap the chat button at the bottom left of your screen.
- Select a conversation from the list of conversations or start a new thread with one of your contacts.
- Tap the hamburger icon at the top left.
- Click on the chat settings screen, tap the Delete Chats option.
A menu will open with two options; After Viewing, and 24 hours after viewing.
By default, the expiry for all conversations is set to After Viewing. The 24 hours option has to be changed manually.
The 24 hour viewing period for a message starts after it has been viewed once. If a message hasn’t been viewed, you can always delete it.
This is not like posting to your story. Anything you post to your story expires 24 hours after you post it regardless of who has, and who hasn’t seen it.
With chat messages, an unread message will not start the 24 hour countdown. It’s only when a user views the message that you’ve sent, the count down for the 24 hours period begins.
The messages expire individually which means each message sent within a conversation thread will have its own expiry time based on when it was first seen.
Here’s an example
If you sent a message at 8 in the morning and another message at 8 in the evening, assuming they were both viewed immediately after being sent, they will have different expiry times. If both messages were viewed at the same time though, they will have the same expiry time, give or take a few seconds.
One last thing we’d like to mention. Be aware that when you change the message expiry time, your contact is alerted to the change.
