One time, I was deep into a late-night Snapchat scroll, diving into Stories, when suddenly it hits me – can someone see when you send their story on Snapchat?
Now, I pride myself on being tech-savvy, but this Snapchat saga threw me for a loop. I then found myself tiptoeing through Stories like a digital ninja, wondering if my every move was leaving a breadcrumb trail.
If you’ve ever been there – unsure if your Snapchat escapades are truly incognito – you’re in the right place! In this article, we’re putting on our sleuthing caps to discover the answer and explore the fixes to keep your stealthy story views under wraps!
Can someone see if you share their Snapchat story?
Someone can’t see when you share their Snapchat story because the platform prioritizes user privacy above all else. In most cases, user activity is hidden from others to protect their privacy and let them use the social media app comfortably.
As a result, there are various activities on Snapchat that you can do without worrying about others knowing about it.
For example, pinning someone as your best friend doesn’t trigger a notification, even though it’s a shared relationship status between you.
But, as in most cases with social media platforms. You can only look for telltale signs to confirm whether this was the case in some cases.
The same applies to Snapchat stories because the platform doesn’t include statistics for people who share them with other users through chat and many different platforms.
Upon checking your Snapchat story’s Insights, you won’t see the number of shares it got from others. Instead, this analytics tool only records the number of screenshots, replies, and views the posted story received from your followers and non-followers.
As mentioned, this arrangement is likely due to the platform’s focus on making user activities feel more private and secure.
However, if you think about it, it’s baffling that they’re okay with recording those who took screenshots of your story but not its sharers.
In such cases, it’s reasonable to think people are more uncomfortable about others knowing they took a screenshot of their content. Letting others know you shared their posts or stories doesn’t seem like something you should worry about in comparison.
For a social media app, it feels uncharacteristic for Snapchat to hide the number of shares a story gets.
After all, other platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) provide this information freely, even sending notifications when sharing and retweeting.
Instead, Snapchat works similarly to Instagram because neither platform lets the poster see who shares their stories. Therefore, it likely has something to do with how sharing stories works on these platforms, which differs from other social media apps.
For instance, sharing or retweeting a post on Facebook or X means reposting it on your account timeline or feed for people to see.
Although you can change its visibility or hide it from others, sharing is typically for showing something interesting to your followers.
However, Snapchat and Instagram differ because sharing a story or post on these platforms means sending it through a private chat.
Since data privacy laws protect chat conversations, it makes sense why they don’t let you see who shares your stories.
Interestingly, Snapchat doesn’t seem to follow the same policy regarding posts you share as Spotlights. After all, they track the number of shares for Spotlights, which is confusing since they’re similar to stories in more ways than one.
However, you can give Spotlights a pass since it’s Snapchat’s response to the ever-growing demand for short-form viral reels.
They had to adapt, or they would have lost their creators to other video-sharing platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
.
Ultimately, whether or not they’ll let someone see when you send their Snapchat story remains to be seen. Of course, they can always do that on a future update, but it’s impossible in the platform’s current iteration.
Does Snapchat notify you when someone posts a story?
Unlike shared stories, Snapchat sends a notification when someone posts a story on their account. However, most users online agree this notification feature is more annoying than helpful because it typically sends them at inopportune times.
Moreover, the notification will usually appear even though a story isn’t available once you click it. In particular, Snapchat notifications can be persistent, going as far as bombarding you with alerts from users you rarely engage with on the platform.
Although it would be nice to see when someone sends your story on Snapchat, it doesn’t feel the same when you get a notification for just about everything.
After all, you only want to receive exciting information, prioritizing quality content over quantity.
Thankfully, this notification feature isn’t that oppressive once you learn how to control it according to your preferences.
This way, you can manage the notifications you get, whether you want them turned off or limited to specific posts from your favorite posters.
Of course, turning off your Snapchat notifications isn’t ideal if you follow specific users whose posts you tend to enjoy watching. Therefore, managing your notification settings to match your preference is your best option to get the most out of them.
Here are the steps to manage your Snapchat notification settings. The instructions below will detail how to toggle your story and app notifications so you can control the information you get on your account.
Adjust your story notifications on Snapchat
| Difficulty | Very Easy ●○○○○ |
| Number of Steps | 7 |
| Time to Perform Fix | 30 seconds |
| Things Needed | Any smartphone A working internet connection |
Adjusting your story notification settings on Snapchat lets you control which posters you’ll receive an alert from whenever they post a story highlight. Doing so is an excellent method for filtering the notifications you get from the platform.
This way, you can only receive a notification alert when your selected users post a Snapchat story. It’s helpful if you don’t want your notification bar to bombard you with multiple unwanted notifications constantly.
Step 1: Go to Snapchat. |
Step 2: Go to your Snapchat profile. |
Step 3: Go to Settings. |
Step 4: Go to Notifications. |
| Step 5: Toggle the “Story from Friends” option according to your preference.  |
| Step 6: Click “Manage Story Notifications” after scrolling down.  |
| Step 7: Select Snapchat friends who can send you story notifications and click Done.  |
Toggle the app notifications for Snapchat
| Difficulty | Very Easy ●○○○○ |
| Number of Steps | 4 |
| Time to Perform Fix | 20 seconds |
| Things Needed | Any smartphone A working internet connection |
Although adjusting your story notifications on Snapchat is crucial for managing the notifications you receive, it’s not the be-all and end-all. After all, it’s pointless if you turn off your app notification settings on your smartphone.
With this, you can turn off all notification alerts from Snapchat, regardless of its in-app settings configuration. Of course, it also means you must turn on app notifications to receive notifications on the platform.
Step 1: Go to Settings. |
Step 2: Click “Notifications & Control Center.” |
Step 3: Click App Notifications. |
| Step 4: Toggle the Snapchat notification switch according to your preference.  |
If you send their story to someone who’s not their friend, will they know?
Unfortunately, someone can’t see when you send their story on Snapchat because it happens through private chat. As mentioned, the platform doesn’t provide this information since data privacy laws protect your chat conversations.
As a result, you can’t see the number of shares your story gets because Snapchat’s analytics tool doesn’t record this information on your behalf. The most surprising thing about this is that you can see how many shares your spotlight content gets.
It’s unclear why this is the case since sharing and sending your story and spotlight on Snapchat happens through private chat.
It’s challenging to speculate that it’s because you can send content to other platforms since it applies to stories and spotlights.
More importantly, your relationship status with the shared story’s recipient doesn’t factor into the equation.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re friends with someone on Snapchat because your private chats will remain inaccessible to others.
It makes sense because data privacy laws prohibit unauthorized access to private conversations online. Therefore, your friendship status with the person you’re chatting with is irrelevant because all chat conversations on Snapchat qualify as confidential.
Based on this distinction, it’s understandable why someone can’t see when you send their Snapchat story to another user, whether or not they’re friends with the poster.
The only way for them to know is if you or the recipient tell them about the shared story.
However, it’s important to note that the poster and recipient’s friendship status can influence the former’s chances of knowing about the shared story. If they’re close friends, the recipient might bring it up in a conversation or notify them about it.
Therefore, we recommend considering the relationship status between both parties before sending someone’s story. You don’t want to seem to be talking behind someone’s back when the poster learns about you sharing their Snapchat story.
Plus, there are other ways for someone to know and confirm that you shared their story on Snapchat. You’ll learn about them once we reach the later parts of this article.
When you share a story on Snapchat, who can see it?
Since you send shared stories on Snapchat through a private chat, only the conversation participants should see them. As a result, the story’s poster can’t see when you share or send their story to someone else.
The exemption to this is when the poster sees your chat conversation through one of the participant’s accounts or if you willingly show it to them on your phone.
Additionally, other people can see the shared story if you send it to another social media platform.
When this happens, the people who can see it will depend on the shared story’s visibility settings once you post it on another platform. For example, sharing a Snapchat story on your Facebook timeline will make it accessible to your friends.
Turning the shared post public makes it visible to users who aren’t your Facebook friends, allowing it to reach more audiences.
As such, sharing your Snapchat story on other platforms is an excellent way to increase your reach and grow your following.
This way, you can advertise your content outside Snapchat, making your audience reach limitless.
How can someone tell that you shared their Snapchat story?
Below are the most plausible ways for someone to know you sent their story on Snapchat. Since the platform doesn’t send a notification, these are the only possible explanations when someone learns about you sharing their story.
- Someone tells them: The poster will learn about the shared story if the recipient or you discuss it with them. It’s the most straightforward method for someone to know about your sharing their story with another user.
- They ask someone: If the poster knows someone who received your shared story, they might ask them to confirm it. However, the poster must be suspecting someone and lucky enough to know a recipient for this to happen.
- They keep getting views from your friends: The poster can suspect you as the person who shared their story if they keep getting views from your friends. Fortunately, this will only raise their suspicion, as it doesn’t confirm anything.
- They don’t have many Snapchat friends: It’s easier for someone to figure you out if they don’t have many Snapchat friends. For example, you can quickly identify the culprit among a few suspects through the “process of elimination.”
How To Make Sure They Can’t Find Out You Shared Their Snapchat Story
It’s challenging to ensure the poster won’t know about you sending their story on Snapchat because you can’t stop others from revealing what you did. Therefore, luck is integral to retaining your anonymity in such cases.
Fortunately, below are our recommended methods to help reduce the likelihood of the poster learning about you sharing their Snapchat story.
1. Share their Snapchat story through your phone screen
Instead of using Snapchat’s sharing or sending feature, showing the target story through your phone screen is the safer option. After all, sharing a story sends its link to someone via a chat conversation, which is evidence of your actions.
This way, no one can prove you shared the other person’s story, even if someone tells them about it. In such cases, it would be their words against yours.
Unfortunately, this only works if you share it with someone in person. Otherwise, you can screenshot and send the story using another messaging app.
However, you must use another Snapchat account to grab the screenshot because your username will appear in the story’s Insights tab. Alternatively, you can turn on airplane mode before taking the screenshot so the app can’t notify the poster.
2. Discuss the Snapchat story
If you can meet with someone in person, discussing the Snapchat story is the best option. After all, you don’t leave any evidence when sharing something through a discussion unless someone records your conversation without your knowledge.
