Snapchat Took Away The Half Swipe, But You Can Still Peek At Messages — Here's How

If you've been mourning the ever-popular Snapchat half swipe feature, you aren’t alone. Half swipe made it possible to swipe on a chat halfway and peek at a message without it switching to "opened," but after some updates hit the app, it appeared to be gone for good. Thankfully, you can still take advantage of the feature, but it functions a little differently. To get started using the updated feature, here’s how to half swipe on Snapchat so you can check your messages on the sly.

Avid Snapchat users have likely spent a good portion of their Snapchat screen time partially reading messages with half swipe. The original feature worked by slowly dragging your finger across the chat screen to peek into a message from a fellow Snapchat user. It didn't really matter where you dragged from, as long as it was on the chat section you wanted. It wasn’t a perfect way to read the entire message, but you could get the basic idea of what it said without actually opening the chat.

It appears some users have recently noticed their half swipe feature disappear from their Snapchat app. A lot of users tweeted about it being missing on Twitter in late March 2021, following some recent updates to the app. However, the half swipe feature changed when the app underwent a redesign update in June 2020 with its “Action Bar,” according to the brand, which is the navigation menu at the bottom of the screen that contains the Maps, Chat, Camera, Stories, and Spotlight tabs. But instead of totally disappearing like people thought it did, the feature got a tiny switch — a different spot you're supposed to drag from to peek at a message. Although it's unclear if the change was recent for these users who tweeted about it, they could have experienced a late rollout or late updates.

Whatever the case, there's a newer way to use half swipe, and it isn't completely gone. When you try to use the old way half swipe (i.e., dragging from anywhere on a chat), Snapchat will bring you to the Maps tab instead of a message preview. Luckily, the chance isn't drastic, and it's easy to learn how to use the updated half swipe.

Here's how to half swipe on Snapchat in 2021:

1. From the Chat tab, find an unopened message from one of your friends.
2. Instead of dragging anywhere on the chat, you'll need to carefully drag your finger over your friend's Bitmoji profile (or the colorful avatar outline if they don't have a Bitmoji).
3. Use the same slow movement you did for half swipe before, bringing your finger toward the right until you can read part of the message.

When using half swipe on Snapchat, the most important thing to remember is to go slow when dragging your finger across the screen because when you go too far, you'll end up opening the chat and marking the message as "Seen."

Thankfully, half swipe is still as available as ever, so you can still wait to reply while eliminating the anticipation of the latest message.