How to Unsave Messages on Snapchat

Clean up your Snapchat convos

By
Elise Moreau
Elise Moreau
Elise Moreau
Freelance Contributor
  • University of Ontario
  • George Brown College
Elise Moreau is a writer that has covered social media, texting, messaging, and streaming for Lifewire. Her work has appeared on Techvibes, SlashGear, Lifehack and others.
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Updated on October 20, 2021
Reviewed by
Jon Fisher
Jon Fisher headshot
Reviewed by Jon Fisher
  • Wichita Technical Institute
Jonathan Fisher is a CompTIA certified technologist with more than 6 years' experience writing for publications like TechNorms and Help Desk Geek.
lifewire's editorial guidelines

When you chat with a friend or a group of friends on Snapchat, those messages automatically clear from the chat box after you navigate away from it. However, you can optionally save and unsave Snapchat messages that are temporarily important.

The following instructions apply to the iOS and Android Snapchat apps, though the screenshots are from an iPhone. Android users should be able to follow along but might notice some small differences.

Smartphone screen showing the Snapchat app.
Pixabay

Why Save and Unsave Snapchat Messages?

If you or a friend you're chatting with shares a piece of information that's worth remembering, it can help to save it so that you can access it later. When that piece of information is no longer of any need to you or your Snapchat friends, you can clean up your chat by unmarking it.

How to Unsave a Snapchat Message

You can save and unsave a message as many times as you want as long as you don't exit the chat.

  1. Open the individual or group chat box with your saved message (or messages) by tapping it. You might be able to access the chat on your conversations tab, or you can search for the friend or group name using the search function at the top.

  2. All saved messages are highlighted in gray; identify the one that you want to unsave.

    You can't select multiple saved messages in bulk to unsave them. So if you have saved messages in multiple different chats with friends or groups, you'll have to open each one individually.

  3. You have two ways to unsave a message:

    • Tap a saved message. An "Unsaved" label appears to the left of it for a second or two before it quickly disappears.
    • Tap and hold a saved message to see a list of options pop up. Tap Unsave in Chat to unsave it.
    Two method to unsave a post in Snapchat

    The first way is the fastest, given that it only requires a single tap.

  4. After you successfully unsave a message, it is no longer highlighted in gray. When you navigate away from the chat, the message you unsaved is permanently deleted and not viewable again when you return to the chat.

How Unsaving Snapchat Messages Works

When you save a Snapchat message, everyone in the chat can see it as long as it remains saved. In other words, if you save a message for yourself, you're also saving it for everybody else to see too.

Likewise, when someone else in the chat saves a message, it saves for everyone. If you unsaved a message, but it remains highlighted in gray and doesn't disappear when you exit the chat, then somebody else has saved it. Unfortunately, you can't remove a message on behalf of someone else. If everybody in a group chat marked a message, everybody would also have to unsave it to disappear from the app.

To see who saved a message in a group chat, tap and hold it; you should see a "Saved by: Name" label beneath the "Save/Unsave in Chat" option.

Finally, if you clear your conversations from your settings tab but have previously saved messages in those conversations, that does not unsave them. Clearing conversations only removes them from your main conversations tab. You need to follow the instructions above to unsave your saved messages.

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