Cue the trumpets and roll out the red carpet. Snapchatters can now rejoice because Mentions are finally coming to the social platform! Snapchat announced the highly-anticipated news on Tuesday, April 3. While the new friend-tagging feature is similar to what you’re probably accustomed to using in Instagram and Facebook Stories, here’s how to use Snapchat's Mentions feature to tag your friends in Snaps.
Maybe you got a ridiculous video Snap of your friend doing a backflip into the pool and you want the world to know who’s in it, or maybe you have an adorable Snap of that fluffy labradoodle who frequents the weekend farmer’s market that you’re always telling your friends about. Whatever it might be, now you can easily tag your crew in Snaps to let them know you are thinking about them. We’ve been waiting long enough, right?
The best part is that it’s just as simple and straightforward to do as it is on other similar social platforms. So, let's talk about how to make the long-awaited and much-anticipated magic happen. Before you upload the video or Snap to your story, click the typing tool and hit the “@” sign, followed by the username(s) of who you want to tag. If the username and profile do not immediately populate for you to select, try typing out the user’s full Snapchat handle to properly tag them … and voilà! Once you’ve uploaded your Snap, the app will send a notification to anyone you’ve tagged in your Story so they can instantly view it. Keep in mind that if the Story or profile is public, other users can swipe up on your Snaps and click the tagged profile to add them as a friend.
Sound like a familiar process? You’re not wrong. The app might have been the first to bring you social stories, but it’s somehow one of the last of the major social sites to incorporate Story Mentions. The rollout of Snapchat’s friend-tagging feature comes about a year and a half after Instagram added the feature to its platform in November 2016. Earlier this year, Facebook followed Instagram’s lead granting users the capability to tag people and pages in uploaded stories.
If you’re one of 158 million people who use Snapchat on a daily basis, you’ve probably been wondering why the company didn’t incorporate the ability to tag users sooner. Reports of Snapchat adding Mentions to their platform first surfaced in early March 2018 when Matt Rappaport posted that he was able to tag fellow Snapchatters in his story, per Tech Crunch.
At the time, Snapchat told TechCrunch they were working on adding the user-tagging capability, but wouldn’t elaborate further upon it. Now, here we are just a few short weeks later with the announcement we’ve all been waiting for. All in all, the process of mentioning someone in your Snapchat Story is pretty much the same idea as Instagram and Facebook — but isn’t it nice that the feature has finally made its way to Snapchat? However, don’t expect to be able to tag your friends in Stories just yet. Unless you’re one of the lucky few iOS or Android users who were #blessed enough test out Snapchat’s latest feature, you’ll have to wait your turn. The company said the Mentions capability will be steadily pushed out over the course of the next few weeks to users around the world.
It's been a big news day for the photo and video sharing app who also revealed a couple of other new features: Video Group Chats for up to 16 people. If your social circle extends beyond that, you'll have to settle on using the Group Voice Chat feature instead. It's meant for you and 32 of your closest friends, of course. Like the addition of Mentions, Snapchat will incorporate the recently-announced Group Chat features throughout the month of April.
In the meantime, make sure your app is up-to-date and keep checking back throughout the month to see when the feature will hit your phone.
