How to use Snapchat: Get started with Lenses, Stories and faces

Evan Gower June 22, 2016

Since it was released five years ago, Snapchat has become of the most popular apps around – but it’s way more complicated now.

How to use Snapchat: Get started with Lenses, Stories and faces

Sure, you can still send photos that disappear once they’re viewed, but Snapchat now comes with so many more ways to keep you and your friends entertained for literally tens of minutes and it recently underwent a significant overhaul.

Here’s how to use Snapchat and get to grips with the basics.

How to find friends on Snapchat

When you open the app, you’ll be presented with the camera screen. To view your profile and friends list, click the ghost icon in the top left-hand corner.
This will show your profile picture, username, and who has added you as a friend. You can see your list of friends by pressing My Friends.
To increase your friends’ list on Snapchat, click Add Friends, and select how you want to add them: search by username, scan a friend’s Snapcode, find nearby friends or browse your contacts.
Go back to the camera screen by pressing the arrow in the top left-hand corner or press the circle at the center of the bottom of the screen. The latter is a simple way to always return to the start screen.

How to use Snapchat Lenses and faces

How to use the new Snapchat lenses and faces

If you’ve been on Twitter, Facebook, or even Tinder for the past few months, you’ll have noticed lots of people are using Snapchat’s new lenses to put a weird, crazy spin on their faces. From a weird lense that puts flowers around your head and tears in your eyes to one that appears to set your face on fire, Snapchat’s certainly put a good range of lenses together. Here’s how to use them.

First, fire up Snapchat and make sure it’s using the front-facing camera. If you can’t see your face, simply tap the camera icon on the top right of the screen, and then your phone will switch into selfie mode.
After that simply tap on your face – on the screen that is – and you’ll see a wireframe briefly appear over your visage. That’s Snapchat mapping your face for the new lenses.
To get the maximum out of each lense, sometimes you’ll have to open your mouth or raise your eyebrows – but if you’re a dedicated Snapchat user, that’s a small price to pay. Snapchat regularly changes the faces or lenses you can use, so you’ll always have something new to try – and some lenses are even themed or time-specific.
To capture the image forever, you just need to press on the filter like you would a normal photograph. After that you can send it to your friends, add text or even save it to your camera roll so it can be saved, printed, or whatever else you want to do with it.