How Long or When Messages Expire on Snapchat | How to Change?

Are you thinking about how long or when messages expire on Snapchat? Snapchat is considered the most engaging and encouraging app among all the social media platforms. Initially, all the conversations in the app used to disappear soon after one viewed them. But with time Snapchat is becoming more flexible and adding more features to make users easy. Now there are ways to change when the messages disappear. There’s also a way to save some messages that are too valuable to disappear. If you want to know how to change the message’s expiration time, and how to save a Snapchat message this one is for you.

If you are wondering how to change how long or when the messages expire on Snapchat then you can change the expiration time of the messages on Snapchat according to our convenience and if you don’t your messages to disappear right away, you can change that to 24 hours after viewing right from the conversation settings. We have simplified it in few simple steps for you so continue reading in order to know how to change when messages expire or for how long the message stays on– Snapchat

How to Change How Long Or When Messages Expire On Snapchat?

Just like we have mentioned above Snapchat now allows its users to change the expiration time of the messages and conversations we do on Snapchat. We can keep the messages for about 24 hours in a conversation and soon after that, the messages will disappear. If you don’t want your messages to disappear right away follow the steps we’ve given below.

 How To Change The Duration As To When Your Snapchat Messages Last or Expire?

In this article, we will be making use of the 24 hours after viewing feature. When you enable the feature for one of your private chats. Now, the person will be able to view your message for 24 hours after he/she has first seen the message. This timer will start when he or she first reads the message and not when you send it to him. If you send it today, even though he ends up opening 5 days later, his 24-hour cycle will begin from that particular 5th day only.

To change the time of expiration, you have to go through the step-by-step guide below:

Step 1: Download and install Snapchat and log in to your Snapchat account.

Step 2: Now you have to open the chatbox by tapping on the chat button at the bottom left of your screen where you’ll see all your conversations with your Snapchat friends.

Step 3: Select and open the conversation from the list of conversations or you can even start a new thread with one of your contacts.

Step 4: You’ll notice the Bitmoji avatar of your friend which is usually located at the top left corner of your conversation box Tap on it.

Step 5: Following that you have to Click on the three dots present at the corner of your screen.

Step 6: Among the options find and tap on the Delete Chats option.

Step 7: This takes you to a menu with two options namely ‘after viewing’ and ’24 hours after viewing.’

Step 8: You can see the expiry for all conversations is set to After Viewing by default, you need to tap on the 24 hours after viewing option manually in order to change the expiration time of the conversation you’ll have with the person.

And that’s it by doing this your messages with the person will stay for 24 hours after viewing. Also note that when you change the message expiry time, the other person will be notified by Snapchat about the change you brought into the conversation with them. And unlike Snapchat stories where your uploaded story will disappear within 24 hours regardless of who saw it or not, in case of a conversation an unread message will not start the 24-hour countdown. The countdown for the 24 hours period begins when a user views the message that you’ve sent,

Please note that you’ll have to follow these steps individually for every conversation. For each conversation, you’ll have to manually choose the message expiration. And if somehow you wish to go back to ‘After Viewing’, all the chats from the last 24 hours will disappear right away so be careful for that as well.

Note: Please note that this is a two-way process you and the other person can bring changes for how long the conversation should stay.

To put it in an example

Just in case you sent a message to a person around 6 in the evening and the person views it around 10 in the night the next day, the expiration time of the same message will be different on both ends that is the message will disappear at 6 pm next day for you and 10 pm next day for the person you’ve texted. Let’s assume that both messages were viewed at the same time though, they will have the same expiry time. Simple maths!

And if you wish to keep a message saved in your chat forever or for a longer period of time then Snapchat also allows its users to do so. We have noted down the steps below for you to save your chat for more than 24 hours.

Also, see: Find Out How to Change Your Cameo Selfies On Snapchat

How To Save Your Snapchat Messages For More Than 24hours?

If you want a particular message or chat to be saved after the 24-hour limit, there is an option to save them as well. In order to prevent some important conversations from disappearing on Snapchat follow the steps below:

Step 1: Open Snapchat and log in to your Snapchat account

Step 2: Open the chatbox by tapping on the chat button at the bottom left of your screen where you’ll see all your conversations with your Snapchat friends

Step 3: Search and open the conversation that you want to save.

Step 4: Touch the message you want to save or you can long press.

Step 5: This will lead you to a pop-up menu, among the options select “Save to chat”.

Step 6: By doing this the particular message will turn grey and will stay there until you decide to unsave it by following the same steps and tapping on “Undo save.”

Note: Please note that the other person will be notified by Snapchat that you’ve saved the chat as well. 

Wrapping up!

So we hope by now you know “how to change How Long or When Messages Expire on Snapchat?” We can save a conversation for not more than 24 hours and in order to save it for more than 24 hours, we need to save each and every message individually which can be a task for sure. if you don’t want your chat to disappear right away we can definitely change it to view it after 24 hours from the conversation settings itself. Try it out yourself and let us know in our comment box below if you have further queries we will be happy to help.

Thank You For Reading!