Snapchat gets group messaging and more

Snapchat’s just had a significant update, the highlight of which is group messaging with up to 16 of your friends.

Called ‘Groups’, these large-scale conversations can be created when you’re making a new chat or sending a snap, and they work a lot like one-on-one Snapchat interactions, with each user only able to open and replay any snap sent to the group once.

After 24 hours snaps are deleted, even if they haven’t been opened, and chat messages also disappear from Groups after 24 hours.

If you want to start chatting individually with one of the group participants you just tap their name at the bottom of the screen, while one swipe from there will take you back to the group.

Music and pictures

And that’s not the only new feature. Snapchat has also teamed with Shazam to let you identify music from the camera screen, by just long-pressing it. Any identified song will then appear on the settings screen.

Snapchat’s also added a couple of new tools, including ‘Scissors’, which let you cut out part of a snap to make a sticker, and ‘Paintbrush’, which can be used on snaps in Memories, to apparently turn them into an “artistic masterpiece.”

If you’re a fan of Snapchat this update looks like a decent reason to keep on snapping, and it’s out now for Android and iOS. The only challenge now is to find a group of likeminded friends, because cats can’t snap. Believe us, we’ve tried.

James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.