After years of neglect, the iPad is finally getting some love from from Snapchat. The comapny just released a version of Snapchat optimized for the iPad, though it’s still not a perfect experience.
It’s a big year for the iPad, first with the release of a dedicated calculator app in the iPadOS 18 update, and now with a dedicated Snapchat app for the iPad. It’s trailing 13 years behind the Snapchat app for iPhone, though the unoptimized iPhone version could run on iPads. The iPad version of Snapchat, until now, didn’t use the display’s full resolution. It had ugly black bars all around, as if someone just shoved the iPhone version of the app onto the iPad.
The optimized update (tagged 13.4.0.41 and supported on iPadOS 13.0 and up) nicely fits into the whole iPad display. The App Store listing now explains, “Snapchat now offers native support for iPad! This means that Snapchat will fill an iPad’s full screen, providing you with a larger canvas when capturing Snaps and allowing you to see more friends on the 2nd and 4th tabs. It’s still the same Snapchat you know and love, but this time on the big screen!”
Snapchat for iPadOS ports over all the Snapchat features from the iOS version, except you can’t use it in landscape mode, at least not without running into those black bars again. It’s unclear when (or if) that’ll be supported to make the iPad truly compatible with Snapchat. We can only hope it’s not another 13 years. In the meantime, you can use all other Snapchat features in portrait mode, including Spotlight, stories, lenses, calling, and maps. The Snapchat AI and Dreams is also enabled here, which you should get rid of unless you want companies using your Dream packs for ads.
Source: App Store
