With around 293 million daily active users around the world, Snapchat is one of the most popular social media apps, especially among millennials and Gen Z.
Snapchat is very oriented towards strengthening relationships with individual people. You can chat with friends, share stories for your friends to see, and earn mutual badges by upholding “streaks” – chatting with the same person every day.
The focus of this article will be on Snapchat stories. Snapchat pioneered the story feature that is now popular on many social platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
Stories last for just 24 hours, after which they disappear completely. Users only have a 24-hour window to view stories their friends shared.
In addition, when you share a story, you have complete control over its visibility. You can set it so that only people you are friends with on Snapchat can view your story, for example.
What if you want to view someone’s story but are not their friend? Is it possible?
In this guide, I will discuss three ways to view someone’s story without being their friend.
The short version: You can only view someone’s story without being their friend if they set their story privacy settings to “everyone.” Otherwise, your only options are creating a fake account or asking a mutual friend to show you their story.
Read on for the details!
Also Read: How To Re-Add Someone On Snapchat If You Lost Their Username?
Why Would You Want to View Someone’s Story Without Being Their Friend?
Photo by Thought Catalog, Pexels
There could be a few reasons you might want to view someone’s story without being their friend.
For example, let’s say you have a crush on someone at your school and want to see what they are up to. However, you don’t want to add them as a friend because you don’t want them to know yet that you have a crush on them or because you’re shy to reach out.
Another scenario could be if your ex deleted you from Snapchat but didn’t block you. Since you are no longer their friend, you may not be able to see their stories, but adding them back would not be an option because it will likely motivate them to finally block you.
Or, maybe you asked someone to be your friend on Snapchat, but they didn’t accept your request. Could you still view their story?
Read on to learn the three methods that would allow you to do so.
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How To View Snapchat Stories Without Being Friends?
Method #1: If Their Story Privacy Settings Are Set to “Everyone”
The most straightforward method to see someone’s story without being their friend is to search for their username and view their story. This is only possible if they set their story privacy settings to “everyone.”
On Snapchat, there are three possible story privacy settings:
- Friends only: If you set your story privacy settings to “friends only,” only people who are your friends on Snapchat can see it.
- Everyone: If you set it to “everyone,” though, anyone can view your story, whether they are your friend or not. All they need to know is your username.
- Custom: This setting lets you specify which people can see your story. You can select only your close circle of friends, for example. Or, you can include almost everyone but exclude people you don’t want to view your story.
It is possible that the person you are stalking has set their story privacy settings to “everyone.” If that is the case, all you need to know is their username, so search for it on Snapchat and see if you can view their story.
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The downside of this method is that Snapchat tells you who viewed your story. So, even if you are not their friend, they will see that you viewed their story.
If you have some sort of bad blood, it could cause them to block you. So, be careful with this method.
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Photo by Solen Feyissa, Pexels
Unfortunately, it isn’t always possible to tell if someone has set their story privacy settings to “everyone.” If you search for their username and don’t see any story, it is possible that they just haven’t shared any stories.
You can continue checking back every day, but it’s still possible that they stopped posting on their Snapchat story for a while. Besides, I don’t recommend stalking someone’s profile every day to see if they shared something because that is not good for your mental health.
In such a case, the best thing to do for your mental health is to let it go and not dwell on it. If they deleted you from Snapchat, it might be best to just move on with your life and find people who think you are worth keeping in their lives.
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Method #2: Creating a Fake Account to Spy on Them
If you can’t see their stories without being their friend, it is very likely their privacy settings have been set to “friends only.” In that case, another option is creating a fake account with another number or email address and then adding them as a friend with that fake account.
You would have to log out of your current Snapchat account and log in to your other account for this to work.
The good news is that Snapchat won’t block you due to using two different accounts on the same app. You can just log out, click on Switch Account, and then log into another account.
Alternatively, just use Snapchat on another device, like your desktop.
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However, this method only works if that person accepts your friend request.
Therefore, it depends on how liberal they are at accepting friend requests from random people on Snapchat. If your account looks new, without an avatar, they may be hesitant to accept your request, especially if the app tells them that you found their account by searching for their username.
That could raise red flags in their mind, as they may suspect it is someone who just wants to stalk them. They may even suspect that it is you and block your second account.
Also Read: How To Find Deleted Friends On Snapchat?
Image by Souvik Banerjee from Pixabay
Instead, you should be active on the fake account for a while, add some random people, chat with them, and then add that person you want to stalk. That way, they won’t suspect anything because they will think you are a real person.
Another scenario in which this could work is if they set their story privacy settings to “everyone” but blocked you on your real account. In that case, their account won’t even appear if you search for their username.
However, if you use another account, you can find their account and see their stories (providing it is set to public). Note that they will be able to see your second account in the list of people who viewed their story.
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Method #3: Asking a Mutual Friend to Show You Their Story
Finally, if you don’t want to go down the route of creating a fake account, there is one more way to view someone’s story. That is by asking a mutual friend who is their friend on Snapchat to show you their story.
The downside of this method is that if they take a screenshot of the story, Snapchat will notify the person whose story is being screenshotted. That is a feature that Snapchat introduced to deter people from screenshotting stories.
If your mutual friend is constantly screenshotting every story that person posts, that person will get suspicious and know that something is up.
There are ways to get around it, though. The easiest way is to use a third-party device to take the pictures.
If your friend has another phone, a laptop with a webcam, or a camera, they can take pictures of the story from the other device. Snapchat will not notify that person that a picture was taken since it’s an external device taking the picture.
Also Read: What Does GTS, GTG, LOL Mean On Snapchat?
Wrapping It Up
As you can see, there is no straightforward way to see someone’s Snapchat story if they set it to “friends only.”
There are apps that claim to let you view someone’s story without being their friend, but they’re usually scams. If there was a bug in Snapchat’s privacy settings that was so easy to exploit, you can be sure that Snapchat would become aware of it and fix it quickly.
These apps or websites will sometimes ask you to pay a fee, only for you to find out that the app doesn’t work. Or, they may simply be phishing methods to steal your Snapchat account login details.
Snapchat allows different privacy settings for a reason. If there were an easy way to view someone’s private story without being their friend, the privacy settings would be useless.
If the story is set to “everyone,” though, you can see it without being their friend. And, if it’s set to “friends only,” it’s still possible to view it in a roundabout way, either by creating a fake account or by asking a mutual friend to show you the story.
