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If you’re already Snapchat friends with everyone from your contact list, you might want to find new people to add and meet. In that case, the best place to look for is in your vicinity. Luckily, Snapchat made it easy to find new friends living or staying near you.
Keep reading to learn how to use the Snap Map feature to find Snapchat friends near you.
What Is the Snap Map?
The Snap Map is Snapchat’s unique feature that displays the locations of all the active users who have chosen to share that information.
When users post a Snapchat story, a blue spot will pop up at their location. Snapchat calls these spots “hotspots.”
Your Bitmoji will mark your current location when you visit the Snap Map. All the blue spots surrounding your area indicate approachable contacts in your vicinity.
Therefore, the Snap Map is the best way to make new friends on Snapchat. Unlike the regular search tool, the Snap Map is reasonably simple to comb through.
However, check the time when the user posted the Snapchat Story. They may no longer be at the same location if a lot of time has passed since the Story post.
Also, note that being active on the Snap Map means anyone can see your current location. If you’re not comfortable with that, you can always turn on Ghost Mode. Here’s how:
- Click on the location icon at the bottom left to open the “Snap Map.”
- Tap the cogwheel icon in the top-right corner to access “Settings.”
- Enable the “Ghost Mode” slider under “My Location.”
- In the pop-up screen, choose the duration of the “Ghost Mode.”
Now that you’re familiar with this handy feature, let’s look at how you can use it to find Snapchat friends nearby.
How to Find Nearby Snapchat Friends on an iPhone
Social media is always more fun with friends, especially when you can use it to meet new people. iPhone users shouldn’t have trouble finding cool new people close by using the Snap Map.
- Tap the location icon in the bottom-left corner to access the “Snap Map.”
- If prompted, allow Snapchat to gain access to your location.
- Select a “hotspot.”
- Swipe left or right until you find a Story that piques your interest.
- When you find the user you’d like to interact with, swipe up on the “Try Lens” option.
- Choose the “Creator” tab to visit the user’s profile.
- Press the “Subscribe” button to connect with that user.
If you have trouble finding hotspots near your immediate area, you can also broaden your search. Focusing on the city you live in will undoubtedly present more options while keeping your potential friends relatively close to you.
To find new people from your city, just tap the city’s name at the top of your screen while in the Snap Map. This will display fresh new Snapchat Stories that you can browse through.
You can also filter out these stories based on their location, especially if you live in a big city. By tapping the “Places” icon in the bottom center of your screen, you’ll see a list of popular locations around the city. Choose the most appealing ones and find new friends who posted Stories from there.
Suppose you’re out and about with your friends and want to find some interesting people close by. If you stumble upon a place with many people you like, you can save it to your “Favorites” tab. In addition, the “Visited” tab under “My Places” will display the places you’ve tagged in your snaps.
How to Find Nearby Snapchat Friends on an Android
Many new potential friends are just a few clicks away, thanks to Snapchat’s impressive Snap Map feature. You can use this feature to find new people living close by or even meet some interesting foreign friends during your travels.
You can see what people around you are up to on Snapchat and connect with those you find intriguing. To find nearby friends on your Android phone, do the following:
- Open the “Snap Map” by tapping the location icon at the bottom left.
- If prompted, allow Snapchat access to your location.
- Click on a “hotspot” near your Bitmoji.
- Swipe left or right to browse through the Snapchat Stories from that location.
- When you find a user you’d like to connect with, swipe up on their Story.
- Select the “Creator” tab to go to the user’s profile.
- Tap the “Subscribe” button to make contact with that user.
If you’re not staying in a particularly lively area, there might not be many hotspots around you. Also, you might not like any of the Snapchat Stories you’ve gone through. If that’s the case, you can go a little bigger than your immediate area.
At the top of your Snap Map screen, you’ll see the name of the city you either live in or are currently visiting. Tap the city’s name to see what other people living there are doing. While you’ve broadened your search, thus including fresh new snaps, the location is still close enough for a potential meet-up with your new friends.
The “Places” tab also enables you to filter Stories based on the location. Click on this tab at the bottom center to see a list of popular locations throughout the city. Then click on a location you like and look for new friends who posted snaps there.
Apart from the “Popular” tab, you can also access the “Favorites” and “Visited” tabs. The former contains places you’ve saved as favorite locations, while the latter lists all the places you’ve tagged in your Snapchat Stories. If you’ve already met great new people in those places, you can revisit them from time to time and hopefully continue expanding the friend list.
Snap Out of Same Old People
Social media apps are an excellent way to meet new people. Snapchat, in particular, is quite proactive in keeping its users entertained with various features. As a result, their Snap Map feature is unlike anything seen on other mainstream social media platforms. This feature allows users to find amazing new friends nearby, and it’s reasonably easy to use, as our guide has explained.
Have you tried using the Snap Map? What do you think about this feature? Let us know in the comments section below.
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