After years of neglect, the iPad is finally getting some love from Snapchat. The company just released a version of Snapchat optimized for the iPad, but it still isn’t a perfect experience.
It’s been 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 13 years behind the Snapchat app for the iPhone, even though the unoptimized iPhone version could run on iPads. The iPad version of Snapchat previously didn’t use the full resolution of the display. It had ugly black bars everywhere, as if someone had just shoved the iPhone version of the app onto the iPad.
The optimized update (dubbed 13.4.0.41 and supporting iPadOS 13.0 and later) fits nicely across the entire iPad display. The App Store listing now states: “Snapchat now has native support for iPad! This means Snapchat fills the entire screen of an iPad, gives you a bigger canvas when taking Snaps, and allows you to see more friends in 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 inherits all of 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) this will be supported to make the iPad truly Snapchat compatible. We can only hope it doesn’t take another 13 years. In the meantime, you can use all of Snapchat’s other features in portrait mode, including Spotlight, Stories, Lenses, Calls, and Maps. Snapchat AI and Dreams are also enabled here, which you should remove unless you want companies to use your Dream packs for advertising.
Source: App Store
