When I was a kid I loved to figure out secrets hidden in Zelda, Street Fighter, and Final Fantasy. My brothers and I would spend hours searching for the hidden treasure.
The people that coded these games cleverly built in hidden gems, upgrades, awesome combo hits and more to keep players interested and constantly searching for new hidden tricks. As an ode to past gaming, there are new Snapchat secrets in 2020 that allow you to do a ton of awesome things. This guide will walk you through all the tips and tricks you need to be a Snapchat super user.
One of the difficult things is that the Snapchat app constantly changes so therefore the secrets are constantly changing and you may find that some are no longer useful or don’t work anymore (this is still true if you are using an emulator to access Snapchat from a computer. If you’re not sure how to do that, look here). I will try to update this guide on a regular basis but be sure to leave a comment if you find a good trick that I haven’t covered below. If you’re looking for more about Snapchat, like how to get started, look here.
1. Snapchat Privacy
The first thing I want to cover are privacy secrets that Snapchat may not want you to know about. In case you haven’t tracked Snapchat’s privacy, there are a number of issues throughout the Apps service that have brought attention to governing bodies, personal privacy advocates, and have introduced various lawsuits.
Snapchat photos
You may have heard that this past week there were hundreds of thousands of Snapchat photos that were stolen. These photos were not on the Snapchat service but were on the servers of an app that is used to save Snapchat photos without the user knowing. Hackers found a security hole in the servers and are threatening to upload thousands of photos to a database where people can search for users they know.
One key thing to note is that Snapchat’s user base has a large proportion younger than 18 years old. Therefore, any posting, viewing, downloading, etc. of underage inappropriate photos is illegal. Therefore, not only are people’s personal private photos being published publicly, but they could also fall within underage photos.
It’s important to know that whenever you use an app like Snapchat your privacy is not guaranteed. Major banks, tech companies, and government agencies have been hacked. It’s a mistake to think Snapchat couldn’t also be hacked. I would also recommend staying away from third party services that save Snapchats as that can cause issues in privacy as well.
Snapchat Photos Don’t Always Disappear
The Federal Trade Commission, the government agency that recently investigated Snapchat and determined that Snapchat photos don’t always delete immediately. (Click here for a PDF of the full report from the FTC website.) The FTC made Snapchat reword their description of the app not claiming the photos are permanently deleted and for them to put together a comprehensive privacy policy that is monitored by a third party. This is in relation to a number of accusations that Snapchat photos don’t delete right away and don’t always protect a users privacy to the extent that they believe it does.
Again, the lesson is that Snapchat will never be completely private and secure, make sure you don’t send out any photos that you wouldn’t want other people to see. There is always the chance to save and publish photos online.
2. Snapchat Secret Settings
There are tons of secret Snapchat settings that will allow you to spice up your photos and make them even better than they already are. Want funny photos or clever photos, these tips can help you make Snaps your own and add a bit of flavor to your Snapchat conversation. Just follow these steps to turn on the settings.
- The first thing you’ll want to do is open up the Snapchat app.
- Then you’ll see the camera and you will want to swipe right or tap the open square at the bottom left.
- This will bring you to the screen with all of your previous sent and received snaps. Just tap the settings gear icon at the top right.
- Under “Additional services” you’ll see Manage, tap that.
- Now, you’ll be given the option to turn on filters, front facing flash, replay, power save mode, and # of best friends. I’ll go into detail about all of them below so you can get a full idea of what each one does.
Snapchat Secret Filters
There are a bunch of cool new filters for Snapchat. Of course you have the general sepia, black and white, old photo filters but there are also a few other cool options. To use these filters you will want to take a photo and after you take the photo just swipe your finger to the left or right and you will see it apply the different filters. Just keep swiping until you get back to the original photo if you don’t want a filter.
Snapchat’s newest secret filter is a geofilter, which allows you to use a filter depending on where you are. Make sure you go into your settings and turn on location services for Snapchat for it to use your current location. From there, you can turn on the filters and it will allow you to use a filter depending on where you are. These filters can be associated with a city, business, sports team, etc. Try it out when you’re traveling to a new city like Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, or Houston and see what the different filters are depending on your location.
The next cool filter option allows you to add the current weather to your Snap. Say you’re sitting on the beach enjoying a nice beer and you want to add the filter showing it’s 90 degrees and sunny to your friend in Vancouver where it’s snowing and cold. Another option is to add the time to your photo or you could add the speed you’re traveling at in the photo. For instance, if you’re a passenger in a car it can tell approximately how fast you’re traveling and it will include that as your filter. Make sure you don’t take a Snapchat while you’re driving, that can be dangerous and is definitely not worth the risk.
Snapchat Front Facing Flash
One of the newest features of Snapchat is that you can enable a front facing flash. If you own an iPhone or Android you probably don’t have a front facing flash. iPhone only comes with a back flash and therefore a lot of photos can be dark if you take them as a selfie with the front facing camera. The way around this is to enable the front facing flash. Basically, it flashes a bright white screen while it takes the photo so that illuminates your face a bit more. It’s not as effective as the back flash but is still better than nothing. Make sure you try to put the camera close to your face as possible for it to work better.
Snapchat Replay Feature
Ever want to see a secret Snapchat photo again? Happens to me all the time. A lot of times when you get a Snap it’s only set for a few seconds and you miss part of it, luckily you can replay the photo but there are a few limitations. You can only replay one Snap per day so make sure it’s one that you actually want to see again as you won’t have another option for 24 hours. To use the replay feature follow these steps.
- First, open the Snapchat app and swipe right to go to the list of Snaps you’ve gotten.
- Go to settings and manage additional settings to turn on the replay feature.
- From there, wait until you get a Snapchat and you will have the option to replay it.
- When you get a snap below it there will be a message to replay it. Tap on the Snap and you will see a pop up message that you can only do it once per day so tap REPLAY if you want to proceed.
Something to keep in mind also is that you can’t replay a Snapchat photo that you got a few days ago for instance. You need to replay it right away so don’t wait to replay it if you know you eventually will want to.
Number of Snapchat Best Friends
The last Snapchat secret setting that you can change is the number of best friends to show. This is pretty self explanatory. Just tap on the setting and change it to 3, 5, or 7 best friends. This basically will show up on your Snapchat profile and let everyone know your best friends. If you don’t want as many you can choose 3 or if you want to show how many best friends you have you can choose 7.
Note, you can’t change it to zero, you are required to have at least 3 best friends. Also, if you don’t have enough best friends to fill all slots, if for instance you have 7 chosen it will only show the ones that you are best friends for and leave the rest blank.
3. Snapchat Secret Colors
One of the best secrets of Snapchat are the ability to draw with secret colors beyond the basic colors that you see when you take a photo. If you haven’t seen it before, when you take a Snapchat photo you see a little pencil icon at the top right. Just tap on it and you will see a rainbow of colors to choose from. Just tap or drag your finger on the different colors to draw on the photo. However, there are a few other options to draw with different colors. Keep in mind some of these are for iPhone as they are already visible and not a secret for Android phones.
Draw With White Pen
If you want to change the color of the pen you can choose to use white instead of a color using a secret crayon trick. After tapping on the pen icon at the top right do the following. Tap and hold your finder on the color bar and drag your finger without lifting it to the top left and that will change the crayon color to white. Then just draw whatever you want.
Draw With Lighter Colors
If you follow the steps below but don’t move your finger completely to the left or completely down then you will get variations of the colors of the rainbow. You can see below the various options for different colors. Test out different variations to get the best hue or saturation of a color that you like. From pastel to deep red.
Draw With Black Pen
Next, if you want to draw with a black pen instead of a color or white, you just follow similar steps as above but a bit different. You tap and hold you finger on the color bar and drag your finger to the bottom instead of the top left and that will change the color to black.
Draw With Transparent Pen
The last Snapchat pen secret only works with Android devices. You can draw in transparent colors on an Android device by pressing down on the rainbow color bar until it comes up with the full color bar. Then you can simply select transparent and use that to draw. This feature is not available on iPhone unfortunately. Hopefully it comes with one of the new updates for the iPhone.
New Snapchat Secrets of 2020
Below I’ll provide some of the newest secrets to show up in 2020 on Snapchat so you can keep up to date on all of the new happenings and make sure you continue to impress your friends and have fun with this incredibly fun and easy to use app. Keep in mind that the settings are constantly changing and we can all hope that the Snapchat developers will continue to impress us with new features and new visions for what Snapchat can be in our daily lives.
We can all expect that as Snapchat continues to grow it will attempt to monetize more and more the app to build their revenue base. I’ll cover some of those new secrets below and what Snapchat is doing to build a broader sense of what Snapchat does and how it’s users expect to engage with the app.
Skip Boring Snapchat Stories
You may not have known that you can easily skip boring stories if you want to get to the next new and exciting story on Snapchat. Sometimes 10 seconds seems so long when it’s a Snapchat story that you don’t want to watch. All you have to do is tap the screen with another finger and it will skip to the next story. Make sure you keep one finger on the story at all times or else you’ll wind up turning the story viewer off.
Switch from Front to Back Facing Snapchat Camera
If you find yourself annoyed that Snapchat automatically chooses either the front facing camera all you have to do is double tap the screen to make the camera switch from the front facing to the back facing. Most of the times people Snapchat selfies but if you don’t want to snap yourself then you can simply choose to switch it to a back facing camera.
Front Facing Snapchat Flash
You can enable the front facing Snapchat flash just by heading over to the settings of your Snapchat app. Basically what this does is quickly flashes a bright white screen on the iPhone or Android and then immediately takes the photo at the same time. This way your screen acts as the flash in essence and will make the photo a lot brighter than before.
Snapchat Discover Companies and Channels
Lastly, new in 2020 is the Snapchat Discover feature that allows you to watch short clips from different companies or TV channels. This is Snapchat’s way of building a revenue model with their current app and user base. Basically, the company pays Snapchat to be featured on the Discover channel and from there you can view funny or informative content that advertises a TV show, movie, etc.
That wraps up our tips and tricks for Snapchat secrets of 2020. We hope that you found these to be helpful and get you to be a super Snapchat user. Let us know in the comments below if you can think of any other good secrets that we haven’t covered below. They are constantly updating their app so it’s likely that things will change in the future and there will be new features.
