The only way to have Snapchat on your Mac.

Snapped for Mac Beta v.0.1.4

Mac OSX 10.9 or later is required

____________________________________________

Snapped is currently in beta, and brings much of the Snapchat experience to desktop. You can log in to your Snapchat account, send photos to your friends and view images they send you — all without having to grab your phone.

The app is the product of ThnkDev, a small development shop run by two University of California, San Diego students. It runs on OS X 10.9 Mavericks, and will eventually be available in the App Store.

To use Snapped, log in to Snapchat using your username and password. Choose the desired amount of time for your snap, select the recipients and you're done. By default, Snapped uses your Mac's front-facing camera to take photos, but you can also upload an image from your hard drive.

The app also provides access to your friends list, sent messages and inbox items. You can send messages, as well as read unread messages, directly from the app.

Because Snapped uses Snapchat's private API, it has a few experimental features that are noteworthy.

You can opt to not mark snaps as read. This means that if my friend sends me a snap, I can continue to look at the photo over and over again — and she will think I haven't seen it yet.

You can also opt to mark messages you send as read before the recipient opens it. This means that if I send a snap and immediately regret it, I can instantly mark it as read, and my friend will never get a chance to see what was sent. In my tests, the "mark as read" feature was a bit buggy, but the idea is quite clever.

For now, you can't add text or filters to snaps sent from Snapped. Adding texts to snaps will be part of an upcoming update, according to Josh Cohen, one of ThnkDev's cofounders. Other new features are also on the way.