Snapchat Will Cap Memories Storage to 5GB Next Year; Learn How to Save Your Extra Memories
Snapchatters have saved over 1 trillion Memories since 2016. In 12 months, the social media company will start charging for over 5GB of saved Memories.
Written by Jackie Leavitt (Editor at Large)
Reviewed by Aleksander Hougen (Chief Editor)
Last Updated:
Snapchat introduced the Memories feature in 2016, allowing users to save certain Snaps to their account. Since then, the company has stored over 1 trillion Memories, and it seems the cost of storing that data for free has finally come to a breaking point.
“When we first launched Memories, we never expected it to grow to what it has become today,” the social media company said in its announcement about the change.
Next year, all Snapchat users will face a 5GB Memories storage cap, which is still enough storage for thousands of Snaps. If users want to store more than that, they will need to subscribe to a paid Snapchat plan.
The options for paid storage include Snapchat+, which will come with 100GB or 250GB of storage, and Snapchat Platinum, which will come with 5TB of storage. Snapchat+ currently costs $3.99 per month or $2.50 per month on the annual plan ($29.99 per year).
The company is giving users 12 months to adjust to this change. Then, if users have more than 5GB of Memories, the oldest Snaps will be saved; any more recent Snaps that exceed the 5GB limit will be permanently deleted.
If users want to upgrade early, they can open Memories, select the “Upgrade Storage” option, then pick a plan.
If users cancel their paid plan and have over 5GB of Memories, they have 48 hours to resubscribe before the over-limit Memories are deleted.
How to Save Your Memories
Snapchatters have the ability to download their Memories in one of two ways: either exporting Memories to a device camera roll (limited to 100 Memories at a time), or receive the full Memories archive by email.
To export Memories to your phone, open the Snapchat app; select the “Memories” icon; tap “Select;” select up to 100 Memories to download; hit the “Export” button; then choose to download the selection to your camera roll; continue this process in batches of 100 Memories.
To verify that you’ve backed up your Memories, tap the Settings gear icon in your profile; scroll down and select “Memories;” make sure that “Backup Progress” says “Complete.” If the Backup Progress says “# Snaps Remaining” or “No Network Connection,” then the Memories are not fully backed up.
To download all Snapchat Memories data, use the “Download My Data” tool. Open Snapchat and go to your profile; hit the settings icon; scroll to the “My Data” option; select all the options you want to save (Memories, HTML Files, JSON Files); hit “Next;” select “All Time” for a date range; confirm your email address; select “Submit.”
Snapchat will email the data to your email address; this might take some time, depending on how much data you’ve stored.
If you want to save your Memories off your device, consider one of the best free cloud storage services for photos, many of which offer double, triple or quadruple the free Memories storage on Snapchat.