Does Snapchat Restore Streaks?

Evan Gower May 7, 2019

Snapchat presents its users with a unique social experience, one that takes the idea of permanence that often comes with social networking, and tears it to shreds. Snapchat is based entirely on the idea of fading memories, photos and videos that don’t last forever and are designed to be temporary. When created with this source of time constraints, Snapchat often becomes an art form. Selfies and embarrassing videos of you and your friends become instant shares instead of being tossed away for fear of repercussions. Capturing the moment around you becomes instinctual and instantaneous instead of feeling forced or manufactured, and considering the temporality of it all, Snapchat feels effortless in its everyday use.

That feeling of relaxation doesn’t necessarily spread to every aspect of the application though. While photo and video Snaps only last for ten seconds (or until the user clicks through to the next photo) and Stories last a full twenty-four hours before dissolving away, Snapchat Streaks are designed to be ongoing, depending on the effort of two parties placed into the social app. These streaks turn Snapchat into something of a game, encouraging engagement with the app each day and pushing more and more people to use the app. Plenty of users have fallen in love with the idea of streaks, encouraging communication on the platform with each user sending a photo or video each day to the other individual. While Snapchat has other signifiers noting the level of friendship between users on the app—heart emojis, smiling-sunglasses faces, and more—but it’s no secret that there’s a feeling of pride when you see you and your best friend’s streak growing higher and higher.

Of course, that means losing a streak can feel devastating. When you and your friends have maintained a streak for years at a time, seeing that number disappear can seem especially cruel. How are you supposed to rebuild your streak, especially if you lost it due to a factor outside of pure forgetfulness? Don’t worry—depending on your situation, Snap Inc. might just lend you a helping hand. Let’s take a look.

Streaks Explained

What exactly is a streak? If you’re new to Snapchat, you may have a hard time learning what exactly users mean when they talk about their Snapchat streaks with their friends, but rest assured it’s one of the simpler aspects of the app. The idea behind a Snapchat streak is simple: you and a friend each snap each other back once a day within a twenty-four hour period (though there’s some contention about this, as you’ll see below). After three days of back and forth snapping, you’ll finally receive a small flame icon, along with a new number: 3, to represent three days of snapping back and forth between users. This is your snapchat streak, and it’ll go up everyday you and the other person snap with each other.

As you can imagine, there are two types of people when it comes to Snap streaks. The first may think they’re cute, but don’t concern themselves with making sure to snap you or another user everyday. If the streak is there, they may consider snapping someone back, but for the most part, users in this group won’t make snapping a priority, even if your streak is in danger of dying. The second group, of course, falls in love with the idea of Snap streaks. No longer is Snapchat just a social app, or even a game, but it’s a part of life. It’s something you check every morning when you wake up and every night before you go to bed. Whether you have one streak or one hundred, it’s easy to bet that, since you’ve ended up here, you belong to that second group.

How to Keep a Streak Going

Keeping a streak going can be tougher than you think. Sure, it starts out easy enough, as you and your friend(s) send photos, videos, selfies and more between each other. But you might be surprised to learn how easy it is to slip, to forget to send a photo back to the person when you’re sure you checked your Snaps that morning. Sure, it’s easy to brush off when a six-day Snap streak dies, but once you surpass 100 days of snapping back and forth, it’s pretty hard to have to start all over. With that said, here’s some basic ways to keep your streak going:

- Start each day by sending Snaps to the person or people you have ongoing streaks with. Make it a routine; you’d be surprised how easy it is to focus and remember to do it after a couple weeks.
- Always keep on the other person if they haven’t returned your Snap back by the usual time. Send them a reminder message to let them know you’re waiting for a reply.
- Snapchat doesn’t hide when your streak with someone is dying. If you’re running out of time to save the streak, you’ll see a small hourglass icon appear next to your contact. This means time is running out for both of you. Snapchat hasn’t officially published how long this lasts, but if we had to guess, you’re probably looking at about four hours remaining before the streak dies, meaning the hourglass appears about twenty hours after your last Snap exchange.
- Both users have to exchange Snaps each day. It isn’t enough for just one.
- Finally, while photo and video Snaps do count towards your streak, a chat message isn’t good enough. If all you’ve done is send your best friend a text message inside Snapchat, you’ll want to send them a photo or video along with it.

Here’s the good news: to qualify as counting towards a streak, the quality of the Snap doesn’t matter. You just need to send something to your friend, whether it’s a photo of your face, a picture of your backyard, or even a photo in the middle of the night of your pitch-black room. Any photo or video counts towards a streak, making it easy, quick, and simple to send something first thing in the morning. If you’re having trouble thinking of what you should place in your Snap to your friends, using your Bitmoji avatar is one of the best ways to fill the frame without sending a blank image. Snapchat even has a couple streak-based stickers and Bitmoji options to use in your image. One other idea: just type ‘streak’ using the text tool on your device to send to your friends. They’ll get the meaning behind the image, and you’ll have accomplished sending your photo for the day.

Restoring a Lost Streak

Whether the app didn’t send your streak, or you were camping for a few days in an area without cell service, losing your streak because of factors out of your control can feel pretty unfair. If you’re trying to restore a lost streak, you aren’t out of luck. Snap Inc. understands that lost streaks are a large chunk of their support tickets, and they actually have a support page for you to use when trying to restore your streaks. To start using it, grab your phone or laptop and open up to Snapchat’s Snapstreak support page here, then follow along with our guide below.

From this page, select the option for “My Snapstreaks disappeared.”
Snapchat will provide you with some basic information regarding what does and doesn’t count as a streak, along with the 24 hours guideline.
Once you’ve read the guidelines, follow the form below the support page to submit your lost Snapstreak claim to Snapchat. You’ll need a number of pieces of information from your Snapchat account, including:
1. Username, email, and phone number
2. Model of device you use Snapchat on
3. Your friend’s Snap username
4. When the problem began
5. How long your Snapstreak was
6. Whether you saw the hourglass icon before it disappeared
7. Other information
Submit your support claim to Snapchat and keep an eye on your email for a reply from the company.

A Final Word

Unfortunately, you can’t be completely sure whether your Snapstreak will get restored. If it’s not, you and your friend can simply start a new streak. Some Snapchat users use tricks to maintain their streaks. For example, they set a daily timer to send a Snap to their friends. Your Snap can be very quick and simple, and it’s enough to send and receive one Snap per day. If you’re maintaining multiple streaks at the same time, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and forget somebody. But you can change the name of your Snapchat contacts to make sure that your streak friends are near the top of your friends list. Since the lists are alphabetical, you can add the string AAAA in front of their names.

Overall, the best way to maintain your streaks is simply to enjoy exchanging Snaps with your friends.