Do you have some recent conversations you want to delete? Or, do you want to delete your recent search history? Thankfully, like other popular social media platforms, Snapchat also offers an easy way to clear Snapchat recents and search history in a few taps. This post shares how to clear recent conversations and search history on Snapchat.
What are Snapchat recents?
Recents are a list of Snapchat activity that happened in the app. It can be the old conversations you had with your friends or it can be recent chats with your best friends on the app. Recents also include your search history. Clearing recents thus means that you remove the traces from the app.
Before jumping into the step instructions below, clearing recents will only delete the past records and will not remove new actions such as new chat or new search.
How to remove recent conversations
Let’s learn how to clear recents. The steps here are same for Android phones and iPhones.
- Open Snapchat app and tap the Snapchat icon (ghost icon) at the top of the screen.
- Tap the Settings icon (gear icon) at the top right corner.
- Scroll down to find “Account Actions” and tap on it
- Select “Clear Conversations”.
- Select “Clear All” at the top right corner to clear all Snapchat history.
Once done, try to go to your Snapchat chat history. You will no longer see any snaps.
How to remove recent search history
Now, let’s see how to clear the recent searches on Snapchat.
- Open Snapchat app and tap the Snapchat icon (ghost icon) at the top of the screen.
- Tap the Settings icon (gear icon) at the top right corner.
- Scroll down to find “Account Actions” and tap on it
- Scroll down and tap “Clear Search History”.
- Select “Okay” to clear your search history.
By doing this, you can remove all your search history. Please note again that this method is not to prevent Snapchat from logging your history in the future. You will need to repeat the steps whenever you want to delete the history.
How to clear scan history
Snappers use Snapcodes (QR codes) to make new friends, access Lenses, link to websites, view exclusive contents, and more. Snapchat leaves scan history for your convenience. To remove scan history, follow the simple steps below.
- Open Snapchat app and tap the Snapchat icon (ghost icon) at the top of the screen.
- Tap the Settings icon (gear icon) at the top right corner.
- Scroll down to find “Account Actions” and tap on it
- Select “Clear Scan History” and tap “Clear” to delete.
How to clear voice scan history
When you search lenses, you can use your voice to input search text. If you want remove recent history that shows your voice search records, check the following steps.
- Open Snapchat app and tap the Snapchat icon (ghost icon) at the top of the screen.
- Tap the Settings icon (gear icon) at the top right corner.
- Scroll down to find “Account Actions” and tap on it
- Select “Clear Voice Scan History” and tap “Clear” to delete.
How to clear cache
If you want to delete metadata, you can clear cache. This will not delete important data such as saved photos, videos, chat, memories, and others. This removes un-important data only. To clear cache, follow the easy steps below.
- Open Snapchat app and tap the Snapchat icon (ghost icon) at the top of the screen.
- Tap the Settings icon (gear icon) at the top right corner.
- Scroll down to find “Account Actions”.
- Tap on Account Actions.
- Select “Clear Cache” and tap “Clear” to delete.
What about old Snaps and Chats?
So, we learned that we can delete recent conversations and search history. You may wonder if you manually have to delete old Snaps and old Chats or if Snapchat does it automatically.
The answer is Snapchat takes care of it.
Snaps
When all recipients view Snaps, Snapchat automatically deletes all of them automatically. If Snaps stay unopened beyond 30 days, Snapchat automatically removes them. Also, if Snaps are sent to a Group Chat and unopened beyond 24 hours, they are deleted automatically as well.
Chats
The messages that are exchanged in one-on-one Chats will be deleted automatically when both people have opened and left the Chat. You can change this setting to deleting after 24 hours. For this, go to Chat Settings and change the erase rules.
Like Snaps, Snapchat will remove all unopened messages after 30 days.
One tip! You can save a Chat by pressing and holding on to the message. When you save the Chats, they will appear on a grey background. If you want to unsave them, simply press and hold.
Snapchat will automatically remove messages sent in Group Chat after 24 hours whether those messages have been viewed or not.
How to delete messages
Although Snapchat automatically deletes old messages, you may want to delete individual conversations you had with a friend. To delete messages,
- Launch Snapchat
- Swipe right across the screen to go to the Friends page.
- Choose the Chat column to find the ongoing chats.
- To delete the message, tap the old message and hold it.
- Finally, select “Delete.”
Consider to download snapchat messages before deleting them
Once you delete recents, Snapchat will not be able to recover them. So, it may be a good idea to back up your old messages before deleting them. To do that,
- Open Snapchat
- Tap on the Profile icon.
- Tap the Settings icon (gear icon) at the top right corner.
- Scroll down to find “Account Actions” and tap on it
- Tap My Data.
- Log into Snapchat again (for Apple device users, use your iCloud account)
- You can select one of the followings to download
- Snap History
- Received Snapchat History
- Sent Snapchat History
- Private Snaps History
- Among these, select Private Snaps History and tap Submit Request.
- Snapchat will send you an email with a link to all your Snapchat message history.
Think again before posting that Snap
We often leave unwanted traces online and we want to delete them. You could make a mistake on Snapchat like sending a message to the wrong person or posting something that is not supposed to be shared by people. Even if Snapchat provides ways to delete conversations, search history, Snaps, Chats, scans, and cache, by the time you are deleting them, it might be too late. You cannot delete someone’s memory.
This might result in losing your Snapchat friends. If you want to check if someone has unfriended you or if you want to know don’ts on Snapchat, check out another post about Snapchat.
Conclusion
We learned how to clear recent conversations and search history on Snapchat. The steps described above should be straightforward. This post also shared how Snaps and Chats are deleted on Snapchat. These are all useful features. However, deleted messages will not be recoverable. So, make sure you clear the right recent conversations or history (and Chats and Snaps too!).
If you want to know more about Snapchat tips, check these posts:
