How To Tell if Someone Deleted Your Conversation in Snapchat

This piece was prompted by a larger discussion around Snapchat that brought up quite a few questions within the team. Even though we are all experienced social networkers, there were still things we didn’t know. Some of the questions that came up are listed below.

CAN YOU TELL IF SOMEONE DELETED YOUR CONVERSATION ON SNAPCHAT?

No. Chats disappear after 24 hours anyway, and if the person you were chatting with has a clear out, you are not notified and nothing happens on your end of the app.

Before you decide to fret preemptively, remember that having your conversations deleted is not necessarily a snub. If the person is a heavy Snapchat user, they may need to clear out the app in order to keep things manageable. They may also be in the mood for a bout of spring cleaning and be clearing out all of their old chats. Either way, unless they tell you they deleted your conversation you would never know.

IF I REMOVE SOMEONE AS A FRIEND, CAN THEY STILL SEE THE LAST MESSAGE I SENT?

Yes. Once the message has been received by the other person, you lose control of it. The server has delivered the message to the other person’s device and it is out of their and your hands. There is a hack that works and some third-party apps that say they work. I tried a couple of the apps and they did not work, which isn’t really a surprise. The hack does work, but it’s a pain.

You can remove the last message of an ex-friend if you, wait for it…delete your own Snapchat account. It’s a little drastic, but as part of the deletion process the platform deletes your messages, apparently even ones already delivered. I haven’t tried this, as I use my account, but others in the team assure me it works.

CAN SOMEONE TELL IF YOU FORWARD THEIR SNAPCHAT TO SOMEONE ELSE?

No. Snapchat does not notify the original person who created the Story that it has been forwarded on. It tells them who initially saw it, but not what happens after that. I tested this out while preparing this piece and no notification was received when someone forwarded a Story of mine.

CAN YOU BLOCK SOMEONE’S SNAPCHAT STORY WITHOUT REMOVING THEM AS A FRIEND?

No. As cool as your friend may be, not all of their Stories are going to be interesting to you. Blocking is a little serious and as far as our collective knowledge goes, you cannot block Stories. You can, however, skip them. Just swipe left when the Story appears and Snapchat will move on to the next. Socially this is a much easier and safer option, as it will offend nobody, and you won’t have to explain to your friend that they can’t find you on Snapchat anymore because you thought they were boring.

‘SORRY! COULDN’T FIND USERNAME’ HAVE I BEEN BLOCKED?

Surprisingly, only one of us has ever seen this message. That tells us we are either all boring and inoffensive or we have forgiving friends. So what is the message telling us? If you see ‘Sorry! Couldn’t find Username’, it usually means you have been blocked by that person. Rather than tell you in plain English, Snapchat thought it would be a gentler let down if they just said the app couldn’t find them.

WHAT AND HOW CAN CHATS CAN BE DELETED IN SNAPCHAT?

You can obviously delete all chats and Stories on your side of the app, but not once they have been received by other people. If you’re spring cleaning and want to clean out conversations, you can clean out your chat feed.

To clean out your chat feed:

1. Open Snapchat and select the ghost icon in the top left.
2. Select the menu icon–the one that looks like a gear–to access settings.
3. Scroll to Clear Conversations within Account Actions.
4. Tap the ‘X’ next to conversations in the next window to delete them.

You can delete your Stories, too, if you like. They self-destruct after 24 hours, but if you want to accelerate that you can.

1. Open Snapchat and swipe left to My Stories.
2. Select the Story you want to delete from the list.
3. Select the small down arrow at the bottom of the Story.
4. Select the trash icon and confirm.

This will delete it from Snapchat with immediate effect. If someone is already viewing it, they will be able to finish it as it already loaded for them, but once closed it will disappear.

You’ve likely noticed by now that Snapchat can be rather lax when it comes to notifications. The brief nature of Snapchat likely plays a part in it; when the user-base is already accustomed to things being gone within a day, it would make the app seem like something of a fluttering hen if it felt the need to let you know about everything that happened slightly earlier than expected.

We take a lot of knowledge for granted, especially when it comes to things we use every day. We may use Snapchat constantly, but as our discussion demonstrated, there are things we can all still learn.

Got any other Snapchat tips you want to share? Tell us about them below if you do!