Snapchat is known for being a very transparent app. It offers many features that other apps don’t, like notifying you if someone took a screenshot in your chat or replayed a snap. However, also unlike other apps, Snapchat doesn’t have a clear indicator that someone is online (usually a green bubble next to a user’s profile).
Luckily, there are a couple of ways to tell whether someone is active on the app. This article will discuss all the different methods to check if a user is active on Snapchat.
How to Check to See if Someone Is Active on Snapchat
Snap Maps
Snap Maps tell you where your friends are when you’re using the app. However, depending on your friends’ privacy configurations, you may not always be able to view your friends’ locations on the map.
You should be able to determine when the individual last used Snapchat and where they were while they were online if they aren’t using Ghost Mode, which masks their location at all times. Users can also prevent the app from accessing their location altogether.
As long as Snap Maps is open, your location will be updated regularly until you put it in Ghost Mode or disable location services. This feature can be used to determine where someone is and when they are online.
Here’s how to do it:
- Find your friend on Snap Maps.
- From the map, select their Bitmoji.
- Under their name, you’ll see a gray status bar.
- There are a few different messages you can see: “Seen Now,” “Seen XXm ago,” or “Last seen,” depending on how long ago they signed off. “Seen Now” indicates that they are presently online in a specific location.
Chat
You’ll be able to detect when someone opens your chat if you’ve been chatting with them. However, you’ll need to be watching the chat the moment they appear to do so. Here’s how:
- To get to the conversation screen on Snapchat, open the app and swipe right.
- Open the person’s conversation by scrolling to it and tapping on it.
- There will be a small Bitmoji avatar of the person in the lower-left corner of your chat window if they are online and have your conversation opened. The person’s avatar will vanish from your chat window after they leave the chat.
Snap Score
The number of snaps a user has sent determines their Snap score. This covers both public and private snaps. When someone’s Snapchat score goes up, it signifies that they’ve just sent a snap.
Snap scores update every few minutes, so you can check back after a little while for any changes. Here’s how:
- Go to the “Friends” tab in Snapchat.
- Tap and hold the name of a contact you want to find out about. The popup box will show on the screen if you hold down the name.
- You’ll see a number at the bottom of the popup box now. This is their Snapchat score. Make a note of it or keep it in your mind.
- To see if the score has risen or not, you should check again in 10 to 15 minutes. If the score rises, it indicates that the person is online.
Opened Snaps
Snapchat tells you how long ago the individual read your snap or message if you sent it. An online status may be determined by looking at this parameter. The timestamp will be reliable for 24h. After a day, it will just show the date and time of when the photo was last seen. Please keep in mind that the recipient must have seen the photo/message for this to work.
The steps are:
- Open the Snapchat app.
- Swipe right to see the conversations screen.
- Find their chat.
- You’ll notice an empty square or arrow under the recipient’s name if they’ve seen your message or snap. “Opened” and the date it was viewed will appear next to this.
- This individual may be online if their timestamp is within the last few seconds or minutes.
Send a Snap
Sending a snap to a contact to check if they’re online is one way to go about this. You may infer the time they were last online based on it. This is how it works:
- Open the Snapchat app on your mobile device.
- Navigate to Snapchat’s “Friends” screen by swiping to the right. All of your recent contacts will be listed.
- Find the user you want to check.
- You can open the chatbox by swiping from left to right over your friend’s name.
- Send a message by entering it and then tapping the “Send” button.
- Remain in the chat window for a while.
- Observe the lower-left corner of the screen if you see that your friend’s Bitmoji is there. That implies the recipient of your message is currently reading it.
- The “smiley” icon will convert into a blue dot when the other person uses Bitmoji, indicating that they are online. If the blue dot or Bitmoji does not display there, the other person is either not online or hasn’t checked the message yet.
Check Their Story Posts
This is a rather self-explanatory method, and you may have already been employing this strategy. New Snapchat users, however, may not be aware of this. You may use this technique to see if a user has made any new posts by checking their Story feed.
You can also see when they posted their snap using this feature. Based on this information, you may make an informed guess as to when they were last online on Snapchat.
Know When Your Friends Are Online
Even though there is no direct indicator that someone is online on Snapchat, these methods come pretty close. Any of these methods will give you a close estimate on when the person was last online if they’re not currently using the app. This way, you won’t have to guess if someone is ghosting or ignoring you – you’ll know.
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