Snapchat has allowed its users to take and send pictures to your friends ever since its release in 2011. However, users have not been able to use pictures that were not taken using the Snapchat camera. This has been taken care of. Users have the ability to use any picture, taken with any camera, even if it is not on your phone. You can even edit pictures on any photo editor then use them. As long as the photo is saved in your phones image gallery you can access it from the Snapchat app and send it to your friends. It is extremely easy to do too. The video below will demonstrate how to use pictures from your gallery on Snapchat.
Steps to Send Pictures From Your Gallery On Snapchat
Here are the steps you should follow when you are trying to use pictures from your gallery on your Snapchat. If you need a visual tutorial watch the video above.
- The first step is to make sure that you have granted the Snapchat app access to your photo gallery. You can do this in your settings or you can just tap allow when the prompt appears. The prompt will appear when you reach the step where you choose the image you’d like to add to your Snapchat story.
- Okay now for the real first step. You will want to start off by opening the Snapchat app. When you do this you will be sent to the camera page where you can take pictures or videos from the app, but that is not what we are here to do today.
- From the camera page swipe to the left. This will take you to your inbox/feed. This is where you get notifications from the snaps you get are received.
- Next you will choose who you’d like to send the picture too. This is done by placing your finger on the user you’d like to send to and swiping left across their name.
- Now you will be in the messaging between you and this person. To choose a picture to send you will tap the yellow indicator at the end of the text box. This action will open up a different camera from the normal Snapchat camera.
- From this separate camera, you will tap the button at the bottom right of the screen. It will look like a little square with rounded corners and will have a thumbnail of your most recent picture in your gallery. Tapping on this will take you to your gallery.
- When you get to your gallery you will simply choose the image you’d like to send to the person. When you choose an image you will come to the image preview screen.
- From the Image Preview Screen you can edit the picture. You can choose from three different filters, add text, draw on the image, and add emojis. You can also add more people to send the picture to. This is done by tapping the original username at the bottom of the page then checking off the users you’d like to send the picture to.
The picture will go to the recipients’ message inbox as a message. They will be able to view it for as long as they want just like it is a message. They can tap it to save it to the conversation. If they screenshot the image you will receive a notification.
How to Use a Picture From Your Gallery on Snapchat Story
Unfortunately there is not a way for Snapchat users to use a picture from their gallery to their Snapchat story using the stock Snapchat app, and there is a reason for this. Snapchat stories are supposed to be a window into each persons life. It is supposed to be composed of real time videos and images as apposed to videos and images from somewhere else at another time. If any image or video could be uploaded to a Snapchat Story, people would be posting images and videos from somewhere else. It would not be an accurate representation of their life at any given time. Another reason this is prohibited is because the images posted to your story are deleted after 24 hours. The time is determined by a time stamp which is recorded when the image is taken with the app. If an image is posted that has a time stamp from the past it would completely throw off the Snapchat algorithm and cause a ton of errors.
There is hope if you are desperate to post pictures from your gallery to your story. There are ways to cheat the system and post pictures from your gallery to your Snapchat story. These processes involve downloading a knockoff of the Snapchat app that allows you to save snaps without the sender getting a notification. Some of these apps allow you to post photos saved in your gallery to your Snapchat story. If you choose to go this route make sure you read the comments on the app in the app store to be sure that the app actually work.
I do not recommend trying to cheat the system. Some of the apps will cause an error to be recorded in the Snapchat server. If too many of these errors are found your Snapchat account could be terminated. This wouldn’t be a big deal because you could just sign up for a new account, but it would be kind of a headache setting up a whole new account and adding all of your friends back.
Happy Snapping!