How to Back up Your Snapchat Photos and Data
It’s not really #deleteFacebook , but there is also a growing movement to erase Snapchat from smartphones. The company’s poorly received redesign, coupled with abusive ads recently popping up in the app, have pushed more and more people to ditch Snapchat altogether, including your favorite celebrities .
But before you deactivate your account, you need to first save as much data from Snapchat as possible. The social network doesn’t make it really easy to export your photos, videos and contacts, but it is possible. Here’s what you need to know.
How to keep your Snapchat memories
Memories is Snapchat’s cloud-based storage system that lets you save all of your snapshots. However, since you store your photos on the company’s servers, uninstalling the app means losing access to everything Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind style.
Unfortunately, there is no way to batch export your memories to your smartphone’s local camera roll. Instead, you have to go through them one at a time. When you’re ready to take on the challenge, open Memories and tap on a photo or video. Swipe up to open the My Link button. Click on it and select “Save to Camera Roll” to save it locally. Now do this a thousand more times until you’ve zipped everything you’ve saved on Snapchat (or you’re too bored to continue).
If you’re not ready to delete Snapchat yet but are thinking about it, you should start to automatically save all your snaps to your camera roll. To do this, open Snapchat, swipe down and tap the “Settings” icon in the upper right corner. Select Memories, then Save To …, and then select Memories & Film or Film Only. Your new pictures will now be automatically saved to your phone by default.
How to save contacts to Snapchat
Again, Snapchat doesn’t make this easy. The company’s website simply points you to the app, assuming the best option is to flip through your contacts and manually write down the ones you want to keep. Really?
There is another option, but it requires a bit of coding. You can use this Github script (posted on Reddit ) to access the Snapchat API from your computer, making it much easier to quickly fetch all of your contacts and store them elsewhere before you deactivate your account. (Assuming Snapchat won’t ban you for doing this; you’ve been warned!)
All the rest
Similar to Facebook , Snapchat also offers the ability to download whatever data you have. Just go to this web page and sign in to your account. Click “My Details” to request all of the personal information that Snapchat has collected about you over the years, including your account history, any purchases you use, how you use the app, and what is known as a “demographic profile”.
Anyway, I just asked for my details, and the file that Snapchat sent me is not very interesting. That said, if you’re going to delete your account permanently, it never hurts to extract as much data as possible before leaving.