Social media apps can do almost everything – but one important feature that every single app owns, and most of us treasure, is keeping our memories. But what if that got taken away from us?
Before the rise of Instagram and TikTok, Snapchat was the real deal. Since its introduction in 2016, its handy feature called Memories has allowed users to keep their photos and videos within the app. However, from now on, anyone with more than five gigabytes (GB) of saved content will be required to pay for additional storage.
The news was announced in a blog post, leaving users in shock. However, it’s still unclear when this will begin. Nonetheless, Snapchat reassured that “the vast majority of Snapchatters” wouldn’t be affected, as people store less than 5GB.
So, if you’ve been saving all of your pictures and videos and are about to exceed the limit, these are the three paid tiers: 100GB for $1.99 (£1.49) per month, 250GB, which is available with Snapchat+ for $3.99 (£2.96) per month, and 5TB (available with Snapchat Premium).
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Naturally, Snapchat’s latest move has been criticised by some on social media, calling it an “unfair” and “greedy” act to charge people to keep their Memories, or risk losing them.
A user wrote on X: “Snapchat wants me to pay to have memories now… the only reason I use that app is for a second camera roll like the greed is sickening” while another one added: “wydm snapchat is deleting all memories and only allowing u to save 5gb of them…… mine has 3 years of concert vids on it.”
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How to export your Snapchat Memories
According to the announcement, Snapchat will give a 12-month grace period for users to manage their content before starting to implement charges. After this, anyone who hasn’t upgraded will risk losing all of their Memories. But if you want to avoid paying a fee to keep your memories, an option is to download them onto your device or cloud storage.
- Export up to 100 Memories at once
Open the Snapchat app and tap the Memories icon (the small “photos overlapping” button next to the camera. Then, Select at the top and choose up to 100 snaps.
Press the Export button (which is an upward arrow icon) and select Download to save them to your camera roll. You will have to keep doing this, depending on how many Memories you’ve got.
- Download all of your data
Having to export your Memories in batches might sound like forever – but fear no more. Snapchat is offering a one-step solution, which is downloading all of your data.
To do this, go to your Profile on your Snapchat account, at the top left of the camera screen. Then, tap the Settings option, scroll to My Data, and select what you want to download. Press Memories – and any other media you wish to download – and then Next.
Users can also do this via accounts.snapchat.com. Once done, Snapchat will email a link to download a .zip file. Then, unzip the folder and save your images and videos to another cloud storage service.
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