How to View Your Snapchat Year in Review

Snapchat has a very cool feature, actually two, that let you review events from the past year. These events could be photos or videos that you’ve saved to your Snapchat Memories. These two features perform similar functions, but only one of them will be available for all users due to their slightly different algorithms.

These features are called Flashback Stories and Year-End Stories. It’s important to differentiate between the two so that you know how your actions may influence what you’ll receive from Snapchat. Let’s start with the Year-End Stories since they have interesting qualifying criteria.

Year-End Story

Year-End Stories roll out kind of slow. It’s understandable since they sift through massive amounts of information in order to generate meaningful highlights for millions of users.

The reason why not all users will receive a Year-End story has mostly to do with the sheer number of posts the platform sees throughout the year. Snapchat devs decided that only very active Snapchatters can access this feature. Therefore, the more memories you save on a regular basis, the more chances you have to receive a “top highlights” sort of album the following year. To be fair, if you don’t use the app on a regular basis you probably don’t care very much about this feature anyways.

It may take even more than a month to get your album, so be patient. However, if too much time passes and you still can’t find your Year-End Story, it may mean that you weren’t active enough the previous year.

It’s also important to remember that you can’t make a request for a Year-End Story, nor can you disable the feature.

Snapchat Flashback in a Nutshell

The year in review or Snapchat’s Flashback feature is pretty much the same as the “On This Day” feature that Facebook offers.  If you’re not a social media connoisseur, here’s how it works.

Snapchat can pull both photos and videos that you’ve posted one year on the same day last year. It does this by searching through your saved Memories and then puts the pieces together. It then generates an album with relevant content for that date from the year before and labels it as a Flashback Story.

Unlike the Year-End Story, Flashback Stories are available to all users, as long as they meet simple criteria, which we’ll discuss in the next section.

Why Isn’t Snapchat Flashback Working?

Can’t see your Flashback Story? There are two main reasons why this might be happening. First of all, if you haven’t uploaded or haven’t saved anything on a specific date the previous year, you won’t be able to get a Snapchat Flashback Story.

No content no Story. It’s pretty simple, given how the feature’s searching and sorting algorithm works.

Another reason for this may have to do with the app itself. Sometimes, Snapchat delivers big updates. If there’s an update that includes something new for the Flashback feature, then it’s possible that some users may be able to use it sooner than others.

It’s not uncommon for Snapchat, and other similar apps, to delay access to a feature that’s just been updated. This is usually done to avoid having too many active users trying to access the new feature. There have been instances when the users have crashed the app by trying to access the recently updated feature en masse.

How to See Your Daily Flashback

Flashback Stories is an extension that has been added to the Snapchat Memories feature. Therefore, in order to see your flashbacks or year in reviews, you’ll have to go to the memories tab.

There are two ways to do this:

Method 1

1. Open Snapchat.
2. Click on the cards underneath the camera icon.
3. Tap the Stories tab.

Method 2

1. Open Snapchat.
2. Go to the Camera screen.
3. Swipe upwards on the camera screen to bring up the memories tab.

In both cases, if you have an available Flashback Story, it should appear either first in the All tab or in the Stories tab. If it’s missing, give it more time. If you go a full day without a flashback then you might want to recheck the memories from last year, to see if you have saved any.

Snapchat’s Most Impressive Features Yet?

Although Snapchatters went crazy when the Bitmoji extension was implemented, it might not be the coolest feature to ever come from this social media app. Many argue that Flashback Stories and Year-End Reviews can bring up meaningful memories and stuff that may have been forgotten. It’s a nice way to remember a fun moment and good friends from the year before.

Do you agree? Do you think it’s worth putting in extra effort on Snapchat to qualify for a Year-End Review? Or, do you think that the feature should only be available on request? Let us know in the comments section below.