Nearly a decade after becoming a digital time capsule for life’s moments, Snapchat is putting a price on its Memories feature. The company announced last week that it is capping free Memories storage at 5GB. If your Memories exceed this limit, you will need to either export them or sign up for one of Snapchat’s new paid storage plans to preserve them.
According to the company, an introductory storage plan offers up to 100GB of storage for one dollar and ninety-nine cents per month. Snapchat Plus users will receive up to 250GB of storage as part of their three dollar and ninety-nine cent monthly subscription. Snapchat Platinum users will get 5TB of storage included in their fifteen dollar and ninety-nine cent monthly subscription.
If you are over the storage limit but do not sign up for a plan, your oldest Snaps will be saved while your most recent ones will be deleted to stay within the limit. The company has given users a twelve-month grace period of temporary storage for Memories that exceed 5GB, but some users are already choosing to export their Memories instead of paying.
You have two main options for preserving your Snapchat Memories.
One way to save your Snapchat Memories is by downloading them to your device’s camera roll. This can be done directly from your phone, but you are limited to batches of one hundred Snaps at a time. This can be a time-consuming task if you have thousands of saved Snaps, though it can be a good way to select only the Snaps you truly want to keep.
To do this, open the Snapchat app and select the Memories icon next to the camera button. Tap the Select option in the top right corner. Then, select up to one hundred Memories that you want to keep. Tap the Export button that appears at the bottom right of your screen and select Download to save them to your camera roll. You can repeat this process to save additional batches.
If you do not want to spend time exporting your Memories in small batches, you can use Snapchat’s Download My Data tool. This allows you to receive your entire Memories archive emailed to you in a single zip file.
To use this tool, open the Snapchat app and navigate to your Profile. Tap the Settings icon in the top right of your screen. Scroll down and select the My Data option. Then, select the Memories, HTML Files, and JSON Files options. You can uncheck the options below unless you also want to save additional information like your chat history. Keep in mind that including extra data might make it harder to find your Memories later in the zip file. Tap Next, select the All Time option for the date range, confirm your email address, and then tap Submit. The time it takes to receive your data will vary depending on how much you have stored.