How to Add Any Photo to Snapchat (without Those Annoying White Borders) (Video)

Snapchat has always been pretty strict about the fact that, since they call themselves a camera company, they want you to use their camera app to capture your photos to be able to share them to the social network aspect of their “camera app”.

When they finally allowed you to use past photos they shamed these photos with a white border letting everyone know how ridiculous you are for trying to share something from the past. Then they decided, okay, past photos are fine but only if they come from the memories section of the app which is where the Snapchat camera itself can save photos to but if you try and share a photo from any other app (i.e. the normal camera app on your phone): white borders of shame.

White Borders

Turns out though, it doesn’t have to be that way.

I actually was shared how to do this from Des, T-Mobile’s social media guru, a titled he clearly deserves with this hack–shout out to him for spreading the knowledge. But essentially there is a way to import photos into the memories section of Snapchat and thereby convincing the app that they were taken by the Snapchat camera and letting you upload them sans borders. Here’s how to do it.

For Android, I’m going to use Google Photos for this because it’s just the most universal across every device, and frankly it’s an app you should use even if just for the unlimited free photo storage (more on that here). But regardless of whether you use Google Photos or not, you just need to use a file explorer or something that can see the different folders where photos are stored on your phone, then find the photo you want.

For iOS, we’ll use the normal Photos app.

Post Any Photo to Snapchat

On Android (Google Photos)

  1. In Google Photos, though, you tap the menu icon and then tap on Device Folders and find the photo you want in there to post.Tap Menu
  2. Once you do, hold down on it to select it (and you can select multiple if you wanted, as well) then tap the three dots at the top right and select Copy to Folder.
  3. Navigate to the Snapchat folder and move the photos to there.

For iOS

  1. For iOS, open the Photos app find the photo you want and tap select at the top right (you can select multiple photos to if you want) and select the photo.
    Select the Photo on iOS2. Then tap Add To at the bottom of the screen and select the Snapchat folder to copy them over to it.Select the Photo iOS

Import into Snapchat

  1. Now, open Snapchat and tap the Snap icon at the top left.Tap the Ghost
  2. Then go to Settings by tapping the gear in the top right corner.Tap Settings in Snapchat
  3. Scroll down and select Memories.Memories
  4. Tap Import Snaps from Camera Roll.Import from Camera Roll
  5. Tap the photo you just added and hit Import Snap.Import the Snaps
  6. Now go back to the regular Snapchat camera and swipe up and select the photo now from your memories, swipe up to edit and then send it to your Story, specific people, what have you.Tap the New Memory

There you go though, you’re all set.

Vertically Crop a Landscape Photo

Now, one finally tip with this though is that a lot of the photos you take you’ll usually take them horizontally and not vertically like Snapchat wants you to.

  1. So to fix that, you can open the photo in Snapseed on any other photo editing app and select the photo you want.Edit a Landscape Photo
  2. Then choose Edit > Crop, select the 16:9 aspect ratio from the bottom and then tap the rotate icon to make it vertical and crop the image as you want it to appear in Snapchat.Vertical Crop
  3. You can then save it to your photos and then follow the same steps above, or skip a step and just tap Export in Snapseed and choose the Snapchat folder to have it save it in there immediately.Finished Crop
  4. You can then go back into the Snapchat settings, select Memories, and import from camera roll the new photo like we did the other one.Share to Story

There you go, not only a way to share older photos without anyone knowing but also a way to increase the quality of your photos as the native camera app on a phone is always better than the Snapchat camera and their public API.

Let me know if that helped you out in the comments below, and feel free to follow me on Snapchat (or any other social network for that matter) and chat with me there. As always, thanks for reading!

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