Posted by gavide 12 hours ago
I actually really like this approach. The action button isn't relevant in this context, and it doesn't occlude the content.
There's certainly situations where you wouldn't want this (ie if you're developing the app and you want to redesign starting from a screenshot), but for the average user I think this isn't overly hostile. I understand that people are dogmatically opposed to intent being modified, but I think you need to balance nuance. I actually enjoy having an attributable source in shared elements, and I think this is a low-impact way of achieving that.
It's a classic case of someone discovering a feature and thinking "hell yeah, so much security" without understanding or caring about UX impications.
I've yet to see someone saying "oh, I'm so glad my screenshot was blacked-out because I didn't realize I was in a banking app". It feels patronizing.
Yes, this. Payment apps, government apps, IM communications.
The other day I almost rooted my phone in anger trying to get around this, before pausing and realizing that this would only cause even more problems with those apps, thanks to remote attestation "features".
My favorite recent case, I almost locked myself out of mobile government services when changing phones recently[0], and it would've made for a stellar bug report showing when "fail safe" design can easily become "fail deadly"[1], with UI view of access and invalidation history clearly showing the timeline of a problem... if only I could take a screenshot of it. But I can't, because "much sekhurity".
--
[0] - Well, it's not really that big of a deal. With government services, there's always a way back. Might involve walking to a local civil affairs office or, worst case, a police station or a notary, but there is a way back. Big cloud services, on the other hand...
[1] - Invalidating a certificate prior to issuing a new one sounds like a good security idea, but in the real world fails critically if the two operations aren't an atomic group. In my case, issuing a new certificate failed, and I ended up walking around for half a day with old one invalidated and not even knowing it.
I doubt most people have a second phone on hand, ready and able to capture actual screen shots when your phone is preventing screenhots.
This feeling usually hits me at airports, with my shoes off and water confiscated. The terrorists won.
Done.
Should the phone identify those things and automatically blur out all of the sensitive information in those photos too?
I’d prefer if my phone did neither that nor told the apps that a screenshot was being taken nor allowing the apps to hide anything that was on screen when a screenshot is taken.
It’s my phone, I want to decide what I take photos and screenshots of.
That's the crux.
Yes, it is unreasonable, because scams have proven to be just as effective at getting people to just read the details out over the phone line, and bank these days are not showing much sensitive information in the open anyways (my recent annoyance - someone thought it's a good idea to never show the full account number on screen, showing just first and last few digits, and an option to copy to clipboard...).
Meanwhile, those very apps tend to be ones people would most often want to screenshot for legitimate reasons - e.g. to communicate or make a record of specific transactions, accounts, their states, metadata, etc. None of which is copyable text in the app, and most of it isn't even properly exportable, so it's not like there's any other way.
Just do a security alert pop up "You are screenshotting potentially sensitive information, are you sure you want to continue".
And just as important: Help your friends and family to move as well, so they can have ad blockers, NewPipe etc. We need a critical mass of users invested in their freedom, otherwise its going to be crushed by malicious/dumb security measures of their banking apps, corporate greed ("oh, a simple misunderstanding, when you clicked 'buy' you rented a limited license. Did you not read the ToS?") and police overreach. It's a perpetual battle.
Very true.
> The right fix is selective redaction, not disabling screenshots everywhere.
That's still a partial fix, though. It would address the problem of accidental screenshots in a better way, but the main point of contention is around intentional ones. Here, the problem is that the app vendor and the user have different notion of what is "sensitive".
WARNING: You are in violation of the My Fios app end user licensing agreement that prohibits duplication of this screen. Please immediately delete this from your device.
... apparently buried in the app T&Cs is a "Distribution of the technician's picture or information is prohibited". Even if there's no tech assigned, the screen with the picture of the grey fake man with a fake hat apparently causes a big old warning if you screenshot it.
GP is saying that BS gets a pass where X would not for a user hostile action.
I don’t use either platform, I have no interest in the debate. As an outsider looking in, the bias has been proven.
Not that it matters much, I am left-of-center generally speaking.
What I want, as someone who vaguely leaned left and has gotten... less so, since certain revelations, are platforms that work. Where you can't just get booted off for things that are not-boot-off-worthy (sorry. wording sucks). In that view, Bluesky is something I'm interested in as a protocol. It should be something the Left and Right can both use, regardless of the people it tends to attract
> "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." = censorship. Unaccountable [flag] = censorship.
> Mass un-elaborated on downvoting = censorship; needing 500 karma to downvote = censorship.
> Turn on showdead in your profile and see for yourself what people are "allowed" to comment vs what they're not. Userbase = mendacious pricks.
Apparently everything is censorship and everybody else is a prick. It's always someone else's fault. There's never responsibility taken for mean-spiritedness or rule violations.
Ever considered that if this is the hill you're dying on, your takes are just terrible and getting flagged is just this site's natural selection?
No, it's everyone else who is wrong? OK then.
I mean, the dead comment in this one is dead because of: "You're just defending Bluesky because you're on the same team politically" which is an unnecessarily unkind, snarky, uncurious way to communicate. That last paragraph was unnecessary but it tainted the entire post.
From the site rules:
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
> Don't be curmudgeonly.
> Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
But, of course, it's everybody else's problem, never yours, never the owner of the dead comment.
It’s so if an app is showing a password or bank account number or other piece of sensitive information it doesn’t accidentally end up in a screenshot. I think there are other places sensitive information won’t show.
Bluesky, and apparently others, are abusing the functionality for advertising purposes.
I think it’s a good thing it’s there. This functionality should be easy for apps.
I’d say this is one for app review or an App Store rule. But we all know those are a total joke.
Why not ask contact for data via text and just copy paste it with double check?
For a short while, screenshots were a workaround for blocked copy-paste[0], as OCR (and, more recently, edge-deployed vision-enabled language models) would allow you to copy and paste any text from a screenshot. But guess what, now every other app is blocking screenshots!
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[0] - Which is the default on mobile apps, and unfortunately desktop apps too. I hate webshit applications, but if they have one redeeming grace, it's that by default, all text can be selected and copied, and it takes nontrivial engineering effort to break that, so most webapp vendors don't bother.
2. And even if you copy-paste the recipient's account number, that also relies on your counterparty not having mistyped their account number, so it would be nice for #1 to be possible to confirm the name.
Right??
Or, even if they add it, there's no way to save the file, only to "share" it, which 99% of the times isn't what I want, and I'm frankly tired of routing through the mail app as a workaround. At this point, at least on Android side, there exist apps whose sole purpose is to be a share target and dump the information to file (and being apps on an app store, chances are top 10 are just thinly veiled malware).
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.mateusrodcosta.apps.share2s...
They probably support proper export for business accounts. Business customers have leverage. Regular people? They're an annoying but necessary nuisance.
This exists for a very bad reason.
>It’s so if an app is showing a password or bank account number or other piece of sensitive information it doesn’t accidentally end up in a screenshot.
and also coincidentally if the app is showing something incorrect that you want to be able to verify and provide proof of now you can't.
>I think it’s a good thing it’s there. This functionality should be easy for apps.
I think it's a bad thing it's there. The functionality should be easy for me.
So as much as a bank might agree with your stance on freedom of compute - they probably don't want to pay for it with actual money.
They really shouldn't be allowed to double down on it.
And arguably, half of it isn't even really security, it's about keeping you in their app. Application interface is the ultimate sales platform, and banks are making extensive use of that fact.
The immediate technical problem is that OSes allow apps to declare what is "sensitive", and then follow those declarations unquestionably, preventing any preservation of that information.
The underlying social / political problem is that platform vendors allow app vendors to unilaterally declare what is and isn't sensitive, and proxy their opinion without question, and with no consideration for users and their context.
This is a failure of imagination for Apple, but it’s hard to blame them.
Who would think someone would put a button inside a “secure” text field and change the masked appearance to a logo?
If I was proposing this feature, I would never imagine someone would come up with something like that.
Your banking app probably has an option to disable that because it's a legal requirement in so many places: People who can't see need to use assistive tools, and that includes screenshots and friends. If you are using a tiny/stupid bank in the US, file a ADA claim and get some money. In the EU check your Ombudsman.
No, it's so you can't screen-record Netflix. The bank doesn't care about that because it's not a liability issue to them, just fetishism; no way they pay Apple and Google for this capability.
Apple and Google should step in and allow users to remove these shenanigans with a little button on the screenshot preview screen, but resist this because of Netflix et al.
"Secure inputs" take many forms, and it doesn't feel like this is abuse in any meaningful way
Follow state is a useful bit of information. There's argument to be made for both hiding and preserving it.
The side button (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iph7d116e557/io...) is on the exact opposite of the volume up button. Pressing the side button to shut down and lock the screen is something I do a lot. Press button (2) with the thumb and you will see that it is very natural to have your index or middle finger resting where the volume buttons are.
And occasionally I press hard enough with my thumb that the finger on the perpendicular side of the phone presses the volume up button and whoops I have taken a screen shot instead.
That said. I do consider this "feature" an abuse of privacy API:s, and I also often get annoyed that I cannot take screen shots of my bank app to for example send account information, or confirm a transaction, or report a graphical bug to the developers at the bank.
Now get off my lawn.
As it is, it is just an annoyance that requires you to do stupid workarounds like taking a photo of your screen.
Imagine if a password manager didn't allow you to copy the password since you might accidentally paste it somewhere incorrect.
Or not: https://github.com/Kunzisoft/KeePassDX/issues/2321
They are imo clearly gearing up to lock down passkeys in practice one day so that you will only be able to use those tied to a Google or Apple account (or some new player). They're already threatening in these issues to blacklist open implementations that don't submit to their requirements, and then requiring an attested client would then become the "best practice" adopted blindly and widely. I think the only hope is for the open clients to fully submit, hoping to avoid full attestation, while not making it too hard to patch out the anti-features. Of course, anyone who can't compile is screwed though.
... have you heard of passkeys?
Yes, it's as stupid as it sounds. And works about as well.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplicatio...
For example, their bug bounty program policy helpfully informs you that "screenshot detection avoidance" is not considered a vulnerability: https://hackerone.com/snapchat . That's because it's always possible.
Because I assume most people want to take a screenshot because they want to capture something they are seeing in the app, most people probably are even annoyed to have the system indicators visible there.
Personally, I wish iOS didn't even facilitate this.
edit: to be clear, I don't think iOS should notify the app at all. The app could register areas as "invisible to screenshots" perhaps - I'm torn on that functionality.
> and now some apps get a hook to insert their branding.
No, apps can already insert their branding anywhere they want. They're writing the app. If they want their logo to be visible in screenshots, they have infinite ways to do that.
This particular way seems basically prosocial. It's much more useful to me as a consumer of the screenshot to see that it came from Bluesky than to see that there was a "Follow" button. It's not what the feature they're using was intended for, but I can't call it an abuse of the feature. What they're actually doing is good.
The fact that you're getting unexpected behavior isn't good. Sometimes you want to create a picture of sensitive information. You should be able to override the app developer's security settings.
I guess the Bluesky bros got inspired by Threads, again.
Do you/should you (we) really expect that though? I regularly use color filters on my apple devices— grayscale to avoid distractions during the day and red tint at night. More recently I’ve been using the motion dots. I don’t know that I can say with confidence that I never want any of those “personal-perceptional-modifiers” to appear in a screenshot, but for most folks, I would guess it’s approximately never.
It is often important to people that the screenshot is an accurate record of what was on the screen.
While we're at it, this "share" containing the copy/paste flow is the exact same kind of thing. And screw whatever logic decides to copy the URL of an image instead of the actual image sometimes from Safari when I select to copy it!
I’m worried that switching apps and screenshots _doesn’t_ put the logo in. If the point of the switch is privacy, isn’t that a bug? Shouldn’t it apply the privacy screen during any screenshot? What if there was sensitive information on there when you were switching and taking the screenshot?
The text at the top of the screenshot is
> Eric Roston
> @eroston.bsky.social
So it's pretty easy to tell IMHO.
It somehow is perfect example of how modern software engineering feels to go astray for me. A feature in my device working completely in benefit of the one providing said software. I wish, and wish only I can, that this trend goes away at some point.
The app knowing I took a screenshot feels adjacent to me to a keylogger. Imagine how many apps are capturing that information silently. To my mind, a screenshot is something that is happening outside of the app context, the app knowing about it is a security flaw imo.
To my knowledge, this is a misunderstanding. The app does not know that you are taking a screenshot, rather iOS knows you are taking a screenshot (as it must) and is excluding an element on display that has been designated by the developer as sensitive information. This is the same technology that prevents you from accidentally screenshotting your password manager; the developer has simply performed a nifty trick to display a small icon behind where the “follow” button would otherwise be displayed.
There are plenty of instances where this sort of thing can be annoying, such as when you try to screenshot a streaming service app and DRM enforcement leaves you with a blank screenshot, but IMO this particular instance is actually very tasteful; seeing “follow” on every screenshotted post is just useless noise, but a small unobtrusive platform icon is a useful reminder that the post came from Bluesky and not another very visually similar service like X(cancel) or Mastodon.
Android does it too: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/14/features/scr...
I dislike this hijacking for that reason and wish there was a way to turn it off.
If you screenshot what you are listening to, after the screenshot is taken spotify will open a full-screen popup to "share" the song you are listening to. This is quite dumb, especially since if you wanted to share a song via the screenshot, you can do so in the OS-level screenshot UI, and then you would close it and see Spotify's own similar version of the same UI. Spotify just really wants you to use their own share button so that they can track you.
I’m not sure why the app needs to be notified. There must be some use but I can’t think of it off the top of my head.
My pet theory: it's because Snapchat got big early, platforms added the feature to facilitate Snapchat's business model, and then banks started abusing it, and it stuck around "because sekhurity".
It amuses me that browsers in incognito mode refuse to allow screenshots on mobile. But same browser running incognito on a desktop can be merrily screenshotted. What is the difference they are trying to enforce based purely on device form factor/OS.
They want use to use the share button so your recipient is more likely to open Spotify (or whatever app) themselves.
So in this instance, am I right in understanding that iOS posts a notification after the user has completed a screenshot, which would make it impossible for the developer to use this notification to trigger anything that would modify that screenshot? Hence the developer’s work around?
Though I don’t see how this is anything like a keylogger.
Yes, and I would say it's a bad thing that the OS tries to prevent this.
> seeing “follow” on every screenshotted post is just useless noise, but a small unobtrusive platform icon is a useful reminder that the post came from Bluesky and not another very visually similar service like X(cancel) or Mastodon.
I would say it's a bad thing that Bluesky makes the screenshot look different from what was on screen for the user. If I cared about excluding the "useless noise" from a faithful depiction of the pixels on my screen, I could address that myself.
As someone who develops apps for confidential conversations, making it harder for people to screenshot the confidential stuff is a feature the sending party wants, that is why they send in your app as opposed to others. It doesn’t make things impossible, just hard enough that 95% of people won’t bother to take a copy.
Same for example with disappearing audio messages on whatsapp
What I don’t like is the app being informed that I took a screenshot. The OS can hide things in screenshots without this.
In a world where people have multiple old phones lying around it isn't that hard to come up with this workaround.
If you send it, it is no longer yours to control.
If it is my phone, it should be mine to control. Too often it really isn't my phone...
Another way to look at it is the OS makes certain guarantees to the developer around security. Giving control of this to the user would erode that guarantee from the OS to the developer. The result of that is that some developers would simply never display some information (e.g. due to their own contracts or reasonable concerns about fraud/abuse/etc.).
Very similar to the video pipelines in modern devices. Prior to video pipelines which the OS could attest could not be hijacked by the user, many content providers simply would not allow e.g. Netflix to release their content on certain platforms. That the OS does provide such an attestation option for developers allows uses that otherwise would not exist.
And that is reasonable, but it is also a surface where an app touches the OS, which should be a permission boundary that I can control. Allowing the option to opt-out of screenshot blocking with a proper double-confirm warning and biometric auth is also reasonable.
They’re abusing an iOS text rendering control function handled by the OS. Before the screenshot is taken iOS swapped out the rendered text for “sensitive” fields and images that.
The replacement is supposed to be something like a masked account number, password asterisks, or just general blur.
Not a marketing logo.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplicatio...
I should be able to screenshot anything I want, including my password manager. I should be able to opt-out at the OS level, or any other level that enforces it. That's why it's definitely a user hostile feature.
pretty sure i was pointing out it is best not to think you are safe sending a message without considering the fact that people do these things.
RIP rational.
>To my knowledge, this is a misunderstanding.
re: an OS informing an app of a user action (but didn’t downvote ya)
> accidentally screenshotting your password manager;
I could not think of a more useless justification for installing malware into the OS. Okay, you've accidentally screenshotted your password manager. So what? Are you going to accidentally upload it to the internet too? I'd much rather live in a world where people who are that stupid face minor consequences for their actions than one in which all of our own computers are used against us.
That is what this article is about and why you should read it before commenting. The whole point is that it doesn't need to know you're taking screenshots. That's why it's a clever trick.
Isn’t that what everyone is talking about?
Otherwise userDidTakeScreenshotNotification only fires for your own app
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplicatio...
Found in the HN commenting guidelines, linked at the bottom of most pages
If someone from Google Maps or LinkedIn team is here, please, when I take a screenshot it's because I want to a screenshot, not share the friggin location/post.
Not sure who got the idea that it was useful, it isn't.
If I'm sending a screenshot it's because I want to send exactly what I see on my screen and not have my recipient's gmaps instance happily recompute a route it thinks is better or leave out the routing information I included, or switch from biking to driving directions, or whatever else.
Ah... to imagine a world where you could just share a coordinate string and people could open it in whatever map app/page they wanted. Geo URI is probably the closest we have today but I don't think much of anything outside the OS Geo community accepts it.
A lat/lon/zoom/start?/dest? is kind of what a Google Maps share currently is, but it's neither an interoperable standard nor a reliable capture of the current state, so really the worst of both worlds.
(Also, hi AB! Nice to see you on here)
[1]: https://www.alltrails.com/trail/canada/ontario/harrison-trai...
I believe it was their response to what3words. It's not as good at the "communicating by text" use case as what3words.
It's not clear who it is protecting against, it does not seem to be effective at protecting against anything at all, it is actively annoying to the user, and has no way to disable. Perfect example of the usual "security theater" feature.
I don't have an iOS device handy to compare against, but it surprises me that Apple wouldn't also recognize that Wi-Fi passwords in particular are extremely common things to share.
Unsecure: open Shortcuts, tap Gallery, search “Adjust Clipboard”. Add to Action Button folder and run from Action Button. - Or add “Dismiss Siri and Continue” action after “Get Clipboard” so you can say “Siri, Adjust Clipboard”.
Type in the still-unreasonably small window, tap Done, paste password. (Then clear clipboard I suppose and consider privacy implication if your clipboard syncs to Mac.)
Could write my own phone operating system to not be subject to the iOS WiFi password field display settings though!
Just like their iCloud Keychain API that lets apps secretly track users across app reinstalls and device resets.
Do you use the same password on every site? How do you deal with data breaches?
> Do you use the same password on every site?
I use a password I can reconstruct in memory for sites I care about logging in by hand. If I don't, or don't mind resetting my password each time, I just use random garbage + whatever platform password manager is the one active today, with vague hopes that it'll still be there the next time I need to log in.
> How do you deal with data breaches?
Who ever cares about those? I'm yet to hear about anything impactful being released on those. It only matters if you actually do reuse the same e-mail/login and password combinations on both important sites and garbage sites. Which is something you should not. But 2FA and magic links tend to solve that vendor-side, these days.
A physical notebook is so easily lost I wouldn’t even consider it.
Just search for keepass in the app store (Keepassium, KeePass Touch, Strongbox, ...)
Frank Dux was a fraud! :)
And I prefer to see and choose the data an app stores on my fucking ICLOUD ACCOUNT. And fucking DELETE it when I want.
There's no way to do that from an iOS device.
But this one looks like you actually mean it? Yikes.
Oh wait it absolutely does.
Hijacking the screenshot process is a privilege that you ought to be able to revoke, it's insane to allow software to be given more control.
And don't tell me it's anything to do with security when it can be circumvented in any number of ways.
It should not exist as a control in the first place.
I know it may sound absolutist, but the way I see it: if you allow this as a user-revocable permission, then the very apps that need to be screenshotted by users most often will be the first to refuse to work at all unless you grant this permission.
Screenshotting is an system operations level feature. Apps should be neither aware of, nor able to interfere with, a screen capture being taken.
The toast shows up after the screenshot, but my phones's long screenshot feature captures the top part a second time, so the top part of the chat becomes unreadable.
It works! Unless:
- the person you’re linking it to doesn’t have an account on that platform
- you’re posting it in a chat, and the site doesn’t implement unfurls correctly
- the site shows a thumbnail on the link, but clicking on it gets hijacked by the “mAkE an aCcOuNt/ login here” shenanigans.
- you’re trying to link to something in context and the sites linking doesn’t support it
- the site is riddled with ads.
- the site is slow to load.
- you’re trying to save something and don’t want to have to load the site every single time in order to refer to it.
- any combination of the above.
Screenshots allows you to get a point in time reference to what you are sharing.
Screenshots are clunky and unideal, but at least they're fast and I know that they don't fail or break or send the wrong info to my contact.
If it were a one off message, this wouldn't be an issue, but if you zoom out on the issue and see you're sending up to a hundred messages a day, points of failure become major life frictions and you're trained out of using things like links in messaging apps.
In 2026, we now know that the information can be edited, or completely removed for many reasons, some legitimate, and some nefarious.
Taking a screenshot is the easiest way to ensure the original is kept for folks to see. Frankly, it'd be even better if (a) the app can signal to the OS information about the url to the page for the screenshot, (b) timestamps were captured in the image and not cropped, and (c) the OS can authenticate the screen shot and digitally sign that it came from an unaltered device.
and then when it does send I have no control over the presentation on the other side. Sites love to add some cringe "I love this app SOOOO much hearteyesemoji fire fire fire... sent from my iPhone, made with love in san cupertino" nonsense in my own voice - literally sending their words into my chats using my account, as though I had written their marketing dreck
Of course this is doable on open source OSes like GrapheneOS, it just sucks that you have to keep modifying the OS every time they release a new version
At least it's open source, so maybe one can add root access and screenshot blocking to it.
You don't have to wish, in this scenario. Bluesky supports third-party clients, you can use one that has a more minimal featureset if you prefer.
Android and iOS should not let apps do this, because it can be (ab)used by apps that you can’t really choose not to use.
I know there’s a popular bank in my country that completely blocks screenshots and screen recordings on Android somehow.
That was the expectation of using the product so it fits and isn’t anything like this discussion.
This deserves a longer rant, but the very premise of Snapchat was always poisonous, and is largely responsible for why, 20 years later, we're now facing extreme proposals for regulating electronic communication.
I generally disagree with the whole line of criticism techies get for "solving social problems with technology", but if there's one unambiguous case where I'd agree it was plain stupid, it's the concept of screenshot prevention, that became prominent with Snapchat. Controlling whether your recipient gets to keep the message you sent them is a purely social problem, and the answer to that in the real world has always, for good reasons, been "once sent, it's no longer yours; once received, it belongs to recipient to do with as they please".
Wdym? Hooking (primarily underage) people onto "daily streaks" of sharing (often inappropriate) pictures of themselves to (sometimes random) other people via likely insecure servers is a _great_ business model!
Great customer retention. Lots and lots of engagement. So much shareholder value.
Oh and just think about how vulnerable they are. _Perfect_ for ads.
Yellow.
They fuckin did it. Not construction not a warning of some type. Not yellow pages. Yellow - cool looking yellow.
Is what I said to myself as a 20-something product designer
Each time I tried to take a screenshot of a password, the password was missing from the screenshot - even when I kept the control centre pulled down far enough that the Password app was starting to look blurry.
At least on rooted Android devices you can bypass that.