How to Tell if Someone Deleted Your Conversation in Snapchat

Snapchat is a popular social media application that made its way to the top due to its user privacy culture. Sending snaps and messages that leave no trace, automatically deleting content, and alerting users if a screenshot was captured created some quirky features.

If you aren’t openly familiar with the application, there are a lot of things to learn. Even the most seasoned Snapchat users have questions about the deletion of messages. Snapchat messages are set to delete automatically after reading them (or 24 hours, depending on your settings). Users can also manually delete these communications. So how will you know whether someone deleted a message you’ve sent them?

This piece was prompted by a more extensive discussion around Snapchat that brought up quite a few questions within the team. Even though most people are experienced social network users, there were still things that they did not know. Some of the questions that came up are listed below.

Identifying when Someone Deletes Your Chat Messages

Identifying when someone deletes your chat message depends on how it got deleted. If the user removes the chat after viewing it (or after 24 hours depending on your chat settings), it’s considered a normal feature. You don’t get an alert that the user removed the chat.

However, Snapchat now allows you to delete a chat after sending it by holding your finger down on the conversation and choosing the delete option. While you can remove a message for any reason (typo, wrong person, etc.), the other user sees that you removed the message.

On the other hand, if users remove their entire chat histories from settings, that will not alert any senders of clearing the cache, primarily because it only clears history on the active users’ side.

Manually Deleting Chats in Snapchat

You can obviously delete all chats and stories on your end, but not for the person on the other side of the conversation. Remember that manually deleting chat conversations before the other party receives them notifies them that a message got deleted! If you’re spring cleaning and want to clean out conversations, you can clear out your chat feed without worrying about the other parties knowing.

To clean out your chat feed:

1. Open Snapchat and select your “pProfile icon” in the top left.
   
   
   
2. Select the “Menu icon“–the one that looks like a gear–to access settings.
   
   
   
3. Scroll to Clear Conversations within the Privacy heading.
   
   
   
4. Tap the ‘X’ next to conversations in the next window to delete them.
   
   

You can delete your Stories, too, if you like. They self-destruct after 24 hours, but if you want to accelerate that you can.

1. Open Snapchat and click on your profile icon in the top left corner.
   
   
   
2. Select the Story you want to delete from the list.
   
   
   
3. Select the “small up arrow” at the bottom of the Story.
   
   
   
4. Select the “Trash icon.”
   
   
   
5. Confirm by clicking “Delete.”
   
   

This will delete it from Snapchat with immediate effect. If someone is already viewing it, they will be able to finish it as it already loaded for them, but once closed it will disappear.

You’ve likely noticed by now that Snapchat can be rather lax when it comes to notifications. The brief nature of Snapchat likely plays a part in it; when the user-base is already accustomed to communications disappearing within a day. If users were sent a notification about every activity of another user, it would likely lose its appeal over time.

Deleting Snapchats FAQs

If I remove someone as a friend, can they still see the last message I sent?

Yes, once the message gets received by the other person, you lose control of it. The server delivers the message to the other person’s device. That message still appears on their Snapchat account.

There are a few third-party apps that claim to remove the message from another user’s inbox. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to work. As stated above, once a message is sent to another person, the server puts that message in their inbox, taking it out of your control.

One tried and true method of removing a message is deleting your Snapchat account. Depending on the content you’ve sent, deleting your account is a drastic move, but perhaps, a necessary one.

Can someone tell if you forward their Snapchat to someone else?

No, Snapchat does not notify the original Story creator that it got forwarded to someone else. Snapchat tells them who initially saw it, but not what happens after that.

Alphr tested this out to ensure it’s still valid and no notification was received when someone forwarded the Story to someone else.

Can you block someone’s Snapchat story without removing them as a friend?

Snapchat does give you the option to ‘mute’ someone’s story. Visit the offender’s profile and tap on the three vertical dots located in the upper right-hand corner. Tap ‘Mute Story’ so that it turns blue.

Fortunately, Snapchat does not send an alert to another user if you mute their story or block their account. There are a few ways to know if someone has deleted you from their Snapchat friends’ list. Although there aren’t any official ways for your friends to see if you’ve blocked them, there are some tell-tale signs.

You can also skip them. Just swipe left when the Story appears and Snapchat will move on to the next. Socially this is a much easier and safer option, as it will offend nobody, and you won’t have to explain to your friend that they can’t find you on Snapchat anymore because you thought they were boring.

‘Sorry! Couldn’t find Username.’ Have I been blocked?

Surprisingly, only one of us has ever seen this message. That tells us we are either all boring and inoffensive or we have forgiving friends. So what is the message telling us? If you see ‘Sorry! Couldn’t find Username’, it usually means you have been blocked by that person.

Rather than tell you in plain English, Snapchat thought it would be a gentler let down if they just said the app couldn’t find them.