You Will Love The New Snapchat Update

As tech companies push the boundaries of their products, the lives of consumers become easier and easier. You can now view 10 seconds of city life, politicians, and friends with more interesting lives than yours much more easily. On Monday, Snapchat unveiled updates that will save you data for iOS and Android.

It's easy to rack up data usage every month with the messaging application, which allows you to photograph, caption, and share your most interesting moments. Fortunately, Snapchat is permitting users to save their data for more pressing concerns, such as Candy Crush, and uploading the one beach picture that you actually like.

The first new feature will have your data plan thanking you. "Travel mode" saves data by letting users tap a new message to load it instead of downloading automatically once the app is open. New snaps on live stories and the "Discover" feature also won't download unless users choose to see them. That way, you can save your data for the people you actually care about hearing from.

The second update, called "Sticker Picker," only serves to make your snaps more personable. Now, Snapchat users can add as many emojis as they want to their messages. Before Monday's changes, emojis could only come from the text line, so users were limited as to where they could place them. Now, go ahead and slap as many as you want all over the screen. Because sometimes, an actual smiling face doesn't convey the same tone as a smiley face emoji.

You can update your version of Snapchat to use the new tools. For travel mode, go to the application's settings, tap "Manage," then activate travel mode. To use your new emojis, tap the recently-added icon in the top right corner.

You can also now export a "Snapcode" as a video file. Finally, there's an easy way to integrate Snapchat with other social media. After exporting the code, you can upload the file to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or anywhere, really. You will no longer be in the position of capturing a really awesome Snapchat video, only to realize that you only have it for 24 hours.

The last update is only a little thing, but you can now tap the eye icon next to the number of views on your story to show who looked at it. Before, you had to tap the snap, watch it play, then hit the eye. This update might be small, but it saves a step that always annoyed me in the past. Even if you were fine with the no-frills first version of Snapchat, the new rendition is worth a download for its handy data saving.