How to half swipe on Snapchat

Half swiping on Snapchat is a popular feature that many users really love and use regularly. But how do you do it? Here’s everything you need to know about how to half swipe on Snapchat.

Social media platform Snapchat is popular for its transient nature of messages, offering a unique way to communicate with friends and family online. But this also presents some challenges, such as the inability to read a direct message without immediately alerting the sender.

Fortunately, you can use the half swipe (also called a half slide) trick to preview a message without actually opening it, thereby not triggering a ‘read’ notification to the sender.

Here’s how you can half swipe into a conversation and not alert the sender you’ve read their message.

Unsplash: Alexander Shatov

How to perform a half swipe on Snapchat

To half-swipe on Snapchat, just do as follows:

1. Open Snapchat.
2. Tap the ‘Chat’ tab.
3. On the ‘Chat’ screen, find the conversation where you want to read a message. Don’t tap the conversation or you’ll end up opening it.
4. Press and hold the sender’s profile icon and slowly swipe to the right, but don’t release your swipe just yet.
5. You can read the message when you swipe to the right. Keep your fingers on the screen while you do so.
6. Once you’ve finished reading, drag your finger back to the left so the message is closed. Then, release your swipe.

This trick only works for reading messages; you can’t view Snaps with a half swipe. It’s also important to note that the half swipe is not an official feature, so it may stop working at any time with future app updates.

If you want to learn more about how to use Snapchat, you can check out some of our other guides here:

How to remove someone from your Snapchat best friends list | How to allow camera access on Snapchat | How to make a public profile on Snapchat | How to make a private story on Snapchat | How to pin someone on Snapchat