Snapchat is a multimedia messaging app developed by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, former students at Stanford University. The app was initially released in 2011, almost 9 years ago. It is designed for both Android and iOS. Snapchat is available in an astonishing number of languages, 22 in all; including English, Spanish, French, etc. One of the main features of Snapchat is that messages, pictures and videos are visible only for a particular amount of time before they become inaccessible to their recipients. The app presently features Users’ “Stories” of 24 hours of chronological content, and “Discover” which allows brands to show ad-supported short-form content. Users are also allowed to keep pictures in the “My Eyes Only” which is a password-protected space.
Snapchat is used for creating snaps, which can consist of photos or a short video. Snaps can be edited using powerful AI augmented reality to include filters and effects, text captions, and drawings. Snaps can be shared privately to selected contacts, or a semi-public “Story”, or to the public called “Our Story”. Snapchat features “Lens”, which allows users to add effects in real-time into their snaps using face detection technology.
The above features make Snapchat an amazing app for creating, editing and sharing multimedia with friends. Snapchat is currently made for mobile phones; it has no desktop version, which means that we are limited to the viewing screens of our phones. What if we want to view a snap on a larger screen for comfortability? The solution is this work-around for installing Snapchat on Windows. Snapchat can only be installed on windows through a virtual emulator which creates a virtual android OS on the windows OS. The best Android virtual emulator on PC is Bluestacks. Read on to learn how to install Bluestacks and subsequently install Snapchat on your PC.
How to download and install Bluestacks on PC
Bluestacks is an Android Emulator and it allows you to run Android applications on your computer. To download and install Bluestacks, follow the following steps:
Step One:
To download Bluestacks for free, visit their official website.
Step Two:
At the website, you will first have to download the installer. Click on Download on the Bluestacks home page to download the installer. Go to the download folder where the installer is downloaded to and run it. If it requires any admin password, input it and run. The installer is a wizard that will go online and fully download Bluestacks and install it for you. During the installation, you will be required to provide and sync your Google account so you can download and install any android application.
Step Three:
Your Bluestacks installation is now complete. To proceed, double click on the Bluestacks icon to proceed and open the app.
Steps to download and install Snapchat
Now that you have fully installed Bluestacks, you can now go ahead and download Snapchat for your PC.
Step One:
Open your Bluestacks application and browse to its Play Store, that is your Google Play Store. At the Play Store, search for Snapchat on the Play Store. Once you find it, click on download.
Step Two:
Go to the Bluestacks icon “My Apps”. Locate the Snapchat that was downloaded and double-click on it to install. Follow the installation prompts by providing the permissions that will be required to install the app.
Step Three:
Return to Bluestacks icon “My App” and confirm that the Snapchat icon is available. To launch the app, double-click on it and it will open. If you already have an account, you can log in and proceed to use your account. If you are not already a registered user, click on “Sign Up” to create an account and start using the wonderful features of Snapchat.
Note that Snapchat requires to have access to your camera to function properly. So you will like to install the app on a PC that has a webcam or connect an external camera to it. Sometimes, when you install Snapchat, you get an error message that “the version of Bluestacks does not support Snapchat”. This is because the updated version of Bluestacks does not support Snapchat. Also, Snapchat has made modifications of the app to prevent it from running on emulators. The solution to the error is:
- Try installing an older version of Bluestacks which should solve the problem in most cases.
- If the above does not solve the problem, you can install Casper. It is an application that makes the emulator invisible to Snapchat and thus boycotts its restrictions. To install Casper, go to Bluestacks Play Store menu and install Casper. Once the installation is complete, open Casper and install Snapchat from it. Snapchat will no longer be able to see the emulator.
Congratulations! You should now be able to successfully install Snapchat on your PC.
Did this help? Let us know!