Guide: ‘Upload Photos/Videos saved on your device to Snapchat’

Back in what now might as well be known as the Dark Ages, the only photos or videos Snapchat users could send to their contacts via the application and share to their Snapchat stories were photos or videos captured using the Snapchat application and its camera. The ability to upload photos or videos stored locally on your device to Snapchat simply didn’t exist. Then, to the delight of millions of Snapchat users, came third-party applications capable of allowing users to share photos and videos that were captured using a camera other than the one Snapchat comes with to the famous social media platform. These third-party applications, however, were found to be in violation of Snapchat’s Terms of Use and were therefore banned by Snapchat – not that the third-party applications were meticulously developed and flawless, though.

It was around this time that the folks at Snapchat realized just how ridiculous the fact that users could only share photos or videos captured using Snapchat’s onboard camera was. Following this epiphany, Snapchat developed a feature known as Memories and integrated it into the Snapchat application. The Memories feature keeps track of both photos and videos captured using the Snapchat camera that you later decided to save to your device’s memory and photos and videos captured using your device’s stock camera or third-party camera applications that are locally stored on your device.

The Memories feature can, consequently, be used to play around with and then share any photo or video, regardless of its origin, that is stored locally in your device’s Camera Roll (or another folder) via Snapchat both as a personal message to one or more contacts or as your Snapchat story. This ingenious feature, which is nothing short of a godsend, can be used to save photos or videos captured using the Snapchat camera to your device’s storage and access, manipulate and share photos or videos stored on your device’s storage.

Accessing Snapchat’s Memories

In order to be able to use the Memories feature, Snapchat has, you need to be able to first access it. The Memories feature was introduced in the form of completely new real estate within the Snapchat application. Regardless of what Operating System you’re using Snapchat on, you can access the Memories feature if you simply:

1. Open the Snapchat app on your device.
2. Make sure that you are on the Camera tab. When you launch Snapchat, it launches with the Camera tab front and center, but if you had your device pull up an already running instance of Snapchat, it might open with a different tab on display. If that is the case, you can simply swipe left or right to make your way to the Camera tab.
3. Tap on the small image icon located directly beneath the Capture button on the Camera tab. Encapsulated within this icon will be a very small thumbnail of your most recent memory.

   

When you do so, a screen labeled Memories will slide up from the bottom of your screen. This screen will be divided into different tabs such as All – the tab that displays thumbnails for every single photo or video captured using the Snapchat camera that you have saved to your device’s storage, and Camera Roll – the tab that contains every single photo or video stored on your device regardless of origin or storage location.

Uploading Photos or Videos from Memories to Snapchat

If you know how to access the Memories feature on Snapchat, you can move on to learning how to actually use it. If you would like to upload photos or videos stored locally on your device to Snapchat using the Memories feature, you need to be able to navigate the intricacies of the feature, so here’s how you can go about doing so:

1. As stated before, the Memories screen will have multiple tabs. The ones you need to concern yourself with are the All tab and the Camera Roll tab. If you would like to share on Snapchat a photo or video you captured using Snapchat’s camera, the All tab if where you’ll want to be. However, if you’re looking to share a photo or video that was not captured using Snapchat’s camera to the social media platform, you need to switch to the Camera Roll tab.

   

2. In the Camera Roll tab, you will see every single photo or video that exists on your device’s onboard storage. Locate and tap on the photo or video you want to share via Snapchat or put up as your Snapchat story. Doing so will open a preview of the photo or video.

   

3. If you want to share the photo or video as it is, tap on the blue Send button in the bottom-right corner of your screen. If, however, you want to make optional edits to the photo or video using Snapchat’s popular editing tools before you share it, tap on the three vertically aligned white dots in the top-right corner of your screen and tap on Edit Photo or Edit Video in the resulting context menu. Once you’re done making edits to your photo or video, tap on the blue Send button in the bottom-right corner of your screen.
4. You will now be taken to the Send To… screen. On this screen, you can choose whether you want to put the photo or video up as your Snapchat story or send it to specific people through the app. In addition, if you want to, you can even add a message to be delivered along with the selected photo or video.

   

5. Once you have selected how and with whom you want to share the selected photo or video, simply tap on the blue Send button in the bottom-right corner of your screen and the selected photo or video will be sent on its way.

   

With Great Power Comes Great Limitation

While the Memories feature is a gargantuan step in the right direction, it is far from flawless and omnipotent. There are a couple of caveats to using the Memories feature to share locally stored photos or videos to Snapchat.