How To Delete A Snapchat Story

We’ve all been in a situation where we immediately regret doing something. In our heads, it plays out as being hilarious, or just really cool (or we’re not even thinking about it beforehand at all), and then it plays out with us looking horrible, or silly, or both.

Words leave your mouth in slow motion, and you can’t do anything to stop yourself from saying them. It’s not a fun experience and one that you’d like to remedy as quickly as possible.

This is why GMail has recently instituted the “undo send” function, but if you’re like me, you would like that “undo send” button placed on every part of your life. Well, we’re still out of luck for what we say aloud to other people in meat space, but we do at least have some recourse in our social media interactions. You’re likely regretting posting something and want to learn how to delete a Snapchat story. That’s where I come in, providing you with a breakdown of all your options including the nuclear option.

But before I get to that point I’d like to go into a bit of explanation on what a Snapchat story is, how to make one and ultimately how to delete it. A new feature also allows you to see how many people have viewed it.

“People always ask me, ‘What is it that you regret?’ And I say, ‘nothing, because I could not buy what I’ve learned.’ And I apply those things to my life I learn. And hopefully, hopefully it helps me to be a better human in the future and make better choices.” – Katy Perry

What Is A Snapchat Story?

You may not be familiar with using a Snapchat story or you may be an expert, but here is a quick rundown of what it is and some quick tips to make a better story so you won’t need to delete your own ever. Back in October of 2013, Snapchat introduced “stories” to go alongside individual snaps sent to your friends. It was a completely new way to share videos and pictures but with a little more staying power than with a traditional snap.

The basic difference is the stories are compilations of snaps all rolled into one, basically meaning you can have a super long story. Snaps are great for individual images and quick moments, but when you want to show how a series of moments unfolds to something larger, there you run into problems. You could send a series of individual Snaps, but that takes a lot of time, and you can’t guarantee that your recipients are going to read them in the right order. Stories bypass all these problems. Your Story lasts for 24 hours (as opposed to the mere seconds default for most of your Snaps) before it disappears and is gone forever (this is still Snapchat, after all, where privacy is king). You will notice that when someone views a story that it plays from the oldest to newest so it makes sense and in chronological order.

All in all, a story is simply a different way to visualize a normal snap and to share it with all of your friends. When you go to send a snap you simply tap the story button to add it to your profile. From there, anyone of your friends can view it for 24 hours and as many times as they’d like.

How To Create A Snapchat Story

If you’ve never tried to create your very own Snapchat story then I’ll give you a quick rundown on how to do it and some tips to get you on your way. It’s very similar to regular snaps so if you have experience making them, then you just need to switch things up slightly to create a story.

Keep in mind, however, that if Snaps are like a scalpel, going only where you want them to (but exactly where you want them to) with surgical precision, Stories are more like a shotgun blast. You send snaps to individual friends, and you can choose precisely who sees them; Snapchat stories are shared with all of your friends for 24 hours. So if there is something you don’t want everyone to see, it’s best to keep it to a regular message which deletes right away. Bear the difference in audience in mind as you’re putting together your moments.

To create your first story, simply follow these steps:

1. Open the Snapchat app and take a photo or video as you would normally.
2. If you want to edit the image by adding text or drawing on it, go ahead and do that.
3. Look for the little square with a plus sign at the top right of it and tap that button to send the snap as a story.
4. You may be asked if it’s the first time if you’re sure you want to publish it as a story, just tap yes and it won’t ask you again.
5. Now, you can check your profile to make sure it actually showed up and is working.

How To View A Snapchat Story

Now that you’ve created your very own story you may want to view your own or even see if other people posted videos that you’d like to watch. Luckily, you can watch them as often as you’d like in the first day of posting. This is good because, if one picture is of your best friend getting ready to serve a volleyball and in the next picture he’s bailed out completely and his head is in the sand like an ostrich, you’d want to flip back and forth between those two images in order to see that transition over and over again.

Of course, in that (goofy) example, we’re talking about two events that occurred right after each other but, to be fair that’s nothing that’s guaranteed in a Snapchat story. It’s important to keep in mind that the images or videos could be a few minutes apart or 23 hours apart so you can’t really make assumptions based on where someone was at a given time because there is no timestamp beyond knowing it’s within the last 24 hours.

To view a Snapchat story you can follow these steps similar to viewing a regular snap.

Head over to the Snapchat app and you’ll notice the initial screen has the camera turned on. Simply swipe to the left anywhere on the screen.
This will move over to the recent snaps and contact list page. At the top you will notice a header for Stories. You can scroll through the list and view the names of everyone that has uploaded a story and hasn’t been deleted yet.
Tap on any one of your friend’s name and you will begin to watch their very own story.

TIPS: If you get bored with one of the snaps within a story, you can use your other hand to tap the screen and it will automatically jump to the next one without having to sit through the entire first video or picture.

You will notice, similar to regular snaps, that the total time left of the story is in a dark circle at the top right along with a white bar going around the circle indicating how much time is left on the current snap until the next one.

Who Viewed Your Deleted Snapchat Story?

Of course, while Snapchat is great for confidential communications, there are always going to be some jerks who don’t respect the trust you’ve placed in them. Fortunately, Snapchat has come up with a simple but awesome way to know when this is happening. One of the awesome new features that Snapchat enabled is to see every single person who’s viewed your story and whether they took a screenshot of one of the snaps.

This is helpful to keep track of which one of your friends knows you were out at a club the night before, or sitting at home watching a movie, etc.

Open the Snapchat app and swipe left to get to the normal stories screen.
Tap on your own name in the list and you will see it open up with information and your multiple snaps that make up the story.
You will notice a purple eye with a number next to it, that’s how many people total that have viewed that snap within your story. You can do this for all of your snaps to see exactly how many people viewed them. You will also notice two green arrows if someone has taken a screenshot of your snap.
You can also see exactly who has viewed each snap based on the grey list of usernames below the snap. On top of that, it will tell you how long ago they viewed your story down to the minutes.

Now that you’ve gotten the hang of creating and viewing both your own stories and your friend’s you may want to delete them if you accidentally posted something you shouldn’t have, or if you are just generally having second thoughts about something you said or did.

At this time you can only delete your own stories so you will have to wait for your friend’s story to automatically disappear after the first 24 hours. This option gives you the ability to delete a single snap within your entire story or just delete the Snapchat Story as a whole.

Follow these steps to delete part or all of your story.

Open your Snapchat app and you’ll want to swipe right to view the page with your story on it.
Tap on your name next to your own story and you will notice that all of the various snaps that make up your story will pop up.
If you want to delete a single snap, this is the point at which you can select the snap that you want to delete by tapping on it.
Now, tap the X icon to the right of the snap to delete it and remove it from your story permanently.
You can continue the process for all of your snaps if you want to remove your entire story.

TIP: If you want to save the story before permanently deleting it, simply tap the down arrow with a line under it to save the snap to your phone’s camera roll.

Can Friends View Deleted Snapchat Stories?

This isn’t cut and dry. If you post a snap into your story you can go in and delete it immediately. However, people can still see it for 24 hours under the recent Snapchat Stories list. After they view it once, it will no longer be in the story list under your name because you deleted it. So they can view it once but not multiple times.

***There are a few ways around this to make sure no one ever sees the story***

1. The first option I’d recommend is quickly going into the Snapchat app and blocking all of your friends for 24 hours and then unblocking them so that they won’t be able to see the story before it’s deleted permanently. To do this, head over to your friends list and swipe left next to every person’s name and tap block. This is a bit tedious but will work to have no one view your story.

2. The second option is to delete your Snapchat account by heading over to the Snapchat deactivation page and entering in your username and password. This will send you a link that you’ll have to click on to permanently delete your account. Then you can immediately go back and sign up again for Snapchat.

Can I See Who Viewed My Snapchat Story After I Delete It?

No, unfortunately once you delete the Snapchat story you can no longer see who has viewed it. The best course of action is to use the trick above to see who’s viewed your story before you go in and delete it. That way you know who you should do damage control with.

That wraps up this guide walking you through your various options when it comes to trying to delete a Snapchat story for good. Everyone has made mistakes and sometimes it’s best to just wipe them from the record entirely and forget it ever happened. I hope this helped you escape some embarrassment or drama related to your snap.

If you found this post helpful I would appreciate if you shared it on Facebook or Twitter and comment below with your tips or thoughts on deleting a Snapchat story.