How Do You Change How Long Your Snapchat Messages Last?
By default, a message is automatically deleted after all recipients have read it and then exited the conversation. There are two steps you can take to make messages stick around longer: change the chat settings so messages auto-delete after 24 hours, or manually save messages you want to keep longer.
Change Your Chat Settings
Change the Delete Chats setting for any conversation you want to stay for 24 hours.
Save Individual Messages
Messages can be kept on Snapchat’s servers for longer than 24 hours if you manually save them.
Tap a message once to save it. Tap it again to unsave the Snapchat message. Press-and-hold to save a Snap while viewing it, or swipe up. To save it after viewing it, press-and-hold on it in the chat directly after viewing it, before swiping out of the chat screen.
If you are looking to just save photos, keep in mind only photos set to no limit can be saved in chat. That same idea applies to videos set to loop.
How to Change Group Chat Settings in Snapchat
Group chats are treated differently than one-on-one chats. While you can edit some settings for the group, chat expirations aren’t one of them. You can save individual messages like we’ve described above, but other than that, all group messages remain viewable for 24 hours by default. Here’s everything you can edit from the chat settings for a group message:
Leave the group Cancel invite links Clear the conversation from the list Add members to the group Copy the group invite link Edit the group name Silence or allow notifications
Here’s how to get to the screen to change those options:
