Can You Still Use The Face Swap Filter On Snapchat?
Swapping your face with your friends can be pretty hilarious. The infamous face swap filter on Snapchat helps you do this, and it was no surprise this entertaining filter became popular rather quickly when it came out back in February 2016.
The ability to swap faces with someone else is just one of many augmented reality filters for the popular chat application – a trend that was widely seen throughout the internet.
From dog ears and noses to Pikachu, bunnies, butterflies and even strawberries. Anything is possible with the wide choices the Snapchat filters provide. However, there’s one catch.
Snapchat filters don’t last forever. Much like the photos you send to your friends.
Each day, different filters and lenses will be rotated. Some are added, others are removed. Perhaps they might even come back one day! We went out of our way to find out how to get your favorite filter – the face swapping option – back into action. Here’s what we found along the way.
Face Swap Filter On Snapchat: Gone Or Still Available?
Currently, the popular face swap filter for Snapchat photos is not available anymore by default. However, there is a way to make this filter available again, by changing the time and date of your phone settings.
It’s a bit complicated to achieve, and it basically is just a workaround, but it does allow you to find some older filters that were popular back in the day. Here’s the secret:
- Open your phone ‘Settings’
- Go to the ‘General’ tab
- Select ‘Date and Time’ and switch off ‘Set Automatically’
- Now you can change the date and time at will. Choose a date in the month February 2016 to access the face swap filter once again!
Now you can tinker around with the date and time settings for your phone and see which filters where available at certain points in time in the past. Please note that you won’t be able to unlock future filter options with this workaround. The trick will work for both Android and iOS devices.
Where To Find The Snapchat Face Swap Filter
Locating the actual face swap filter after using the workaround described before is not that complicated. After changing the date and time successfully, you should be able to find the older filters and lenses that were available at that time.
In order to find Snapchat filters, please follow the following simple steps:
- Open your ‘Snapchat’ app
- Go to your profile and click on the ‘Settings’ cog in the top right corner
- Navigate to ‘Manage’ and choose ‘Filters’
- Activate your camera
- Tap the screen
- Filters will appear alongside the button to take a new picture
As you can see, adding new filters is not too complicated. By playing around with your settings, you can quickly reintroduce the classic face swap filters you grew to love so much.
Once you succeeded in doing this, please follow the detailed instructions below to understand how this unique filter can be used. Enjoy taking new snaps!
How The Snapchat Face Swap Filter Works
Once you’ve successfully installed the face swap filter on your Snapchat app, it’s time to start using it. Some people might still remember what it was like to use this ‘alternate reality’ snap filter, but others might have forgotten the process.
In order to help everyone get up to speed as quickly as possible, we’d like to give a reminder to all on how to use the face swap filter, step-by-step. If you happen to have any questions about using the filter after reading the instructions below, don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll help you out.
1. Line up your face to the camera and press hold
After navigating to the camera inside the Snapchat app, you select the appropriate filter. If you cannot find it, make sure to refer back to the instructions we’ve provided earlier in this article.
Assuming you’ve now found the correct filter and are in camera-mode, it’s time to line up your face to the camera. Here’s a few extra tips to get the best final results for face swapping:
- Use natural light: Make sure you’re in a well-lit area when snapping the picture on your phone, otherwise it’s hard for the app to pick up your facial features correctly.
- Choose the rear camera: The quality of the rear camera on your phone is often much better than the front camera, which is often used for selfies. It’s a bit of a workaround, but the final results will be better!
- Avoid sudden movements: It takes a few seconds for the filter to line your face up for swapping it with your friend. The less movement, the quicker the procedure.
2. Select the face swap lens effect
Next, you should select the yellow icon for the face swap lens effect. Please note that lenses are only available for Android devices running version 4.3 or higher, or iPhones using iOS version 7.0 or higher. Lenses are not supported for older devices or older versions of the Snapchat app.
In the list of available lenses, the lens swap feature will be visible at the very end of the options. So make sure to scroll through all of them when picking the correct lens filter. It should be a yellow icon with two smiling faces and swapping arrows.
3. Line up two faces with the smiley overlays
After selecting the correct lens effect, proceed to position your face on the smiley that is shown on the screen. Your friend or family member should do the same. The second person is your face swap partner, you cannot do this alone.
As soon as your face is positioned correctly in the lens, the white smiley will turn yellow. This makes it simple to see when you’re ready to snap the picture. Don’t forget to make a goofy face to make your swapping partner look a bit silly.
4. Snap a picture, save and send!
Once positioned correctly, you can snap the picture. All you need to do is tap the circle icon, just like you would when taking a normal picture with your camera.
Alternatively, you can choose to press and hold the circle to take a face swap video. After taking the snap, feel free to edit the final result to your liking. You can add stickers, text, or drawings. Once you’re done, feel free start sending the snap to your Snapchat contacts.
It’s also possible to add the face swap snap to your story, which will make it available to all your contacts for a maximum of 24 hours. After that time period, it will be gone forever. Don’t want to lose it? You can download the snap using the download button to export it to your phone gallery or camera roll. It’s an optional choice to save it externally.
Snapchat Camera Filters: Harmless Entertainment?
As a Snapchat user, the face swap filter was possibly the first encounter you’ve had to a worldwide trend in technology: the rise of deepfakes. While still harmless fun in the app, changing your identity using your smart devices could have serious consequences in the future.
For Snapchat, this isn’t even remotely the case, but other popular apps like TikTok are also starting to experiment with similar features that allow you to alter your identity. They allow you to edit your face into a video starring another person.
What do you think about this development? Does it scare you, or are you excited about what the future of smartphone technology can do for us? It should be interesting to see where other social media apps will take the identity-concealing filters that were first introduced on Snapchat.
