If you’re still new to Snapchat and you’ve played around with sending a few snaps, you’ll notice a bunch of weird arrow or square icons next to your snaps. Decoding them is rather simple once you start to understand the system. The key factors in an icon are the fill, the color, and the shape.
Let’s begin with the fill style. The fill is whether the shape is filled in with the color or is blank (white). If the shape is filled in with its color, the snap is unread. It has been delivered successfully but the recipient has not yet opened.
Now, the shape is also a binary option. A triangle means that you sent the snap, and the square means that you received a new snap from someone last. There are two more options. A triangle with another triangle behind it means that the recipient screenshotted the last delivered snap, and a square with splash markings around it means you screenshotted the last delivered snap.
The color can be either red, blue or purple. Red means that the last delivered snap was a picture. Purple means that the last delivered snap was a video. Finally, blue means that the last snap wasn’t a snap but actually just your text chat with the user.
A snap icon can be a combination of these three factors. The only exception is the screenshot shapes, screenshot symbols will never be filled in (because how can you screenshot a snap if you don’t open it.) This should aid you as a legend to master determining snap icons and get you well on your way to becoming fluent with the snap.