| ▲ | 3form 10 hours ago |
| Well, I have not once found a single case where an app reacting to screenshots and controlling the process in any way was anything to me but hostile and annoying. This one does not help. 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. |
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| ▲ | thepasswordis 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It is actually astonishing to me that this is not something which can be turned off at the OS level, or as a permission setting in the app permissions. 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. |
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| ▲ | CircuitSeuss 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > The app knowing I took a screenshot feels adjacent to me to a keylogger. 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. | | |
| ▲ | efskap 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The app actually is notified after the screenshot is taken: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplicatio... Android does it too: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/14/features/scr... | | |
| ▲ | albert_e 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This prevents us from taking scrolling screenshots (a native feature in many smartphones today that is often useful when there is more than one screen of content). I dislike this hijacking for that reason and wish there was a way to turn it off. | |
| ▲ | snailmailman 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Spotify uses this and it annoys me all the time. 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. | | |
| ▲ | MBCook 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I’ve seen another app do that but for a different reason. It’s for security cameras and they use it to show a “hey idiot just press the save a picture button, don’t take screenshots” popup, which is also hostile. 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. | | |
| ▲ | TeMPOraL 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > 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". |
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| ▲ | smelendez 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yes, it is very annoying. But I think they are already tracking you. They want use to use the share button so your recipient is more likely to open Spotify (or whatever app) themselves. |
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| ▲ | CircuitSeuss 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Very interesting!
Parent poster is correct, that notification does feel akin to a key logger… although I’m not sure that it applies to this bluesky feature. 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? | | |
| ▲ | MBCook 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Correct. Though I don’t see how this is anything like a keylogger. |
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| ▲ | zahlman 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > This is the same technology that prevents you from accidentally screenshotting your password manager 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. | | |
| ▲ | runako 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Yes, and I would say it's a bad thing that the OS tries to prevent this. 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. | | |
| ▲ | ruszki 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | But… but they allowed. For a long time. Netflix didn’t need that. |
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| ▲ | EGreg 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why is this feature bad? 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. | | |
| ▲ | nemomarx 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | One user wants it not to be shared, but the other user might have various reasons to want to take that screenshot - maybe it's evidence of something they need to share urgently with others, whatever. It's definitely hostile to that other user. I get why you'd set it up that way, but it's a tension that really goes against the "full control of your own device" ideal a lot of people have. | |
| ▲ | stronglikedan 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Don't send me anything you don't want screenshotted. Easy-peasy. I'll accept an opt-out of whatever protections are in place for the general user, but I don't accept that those protections should remain in place for all users. It's hostile. | |
| ▲ | _carbyau_ 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Honestly, even schoolkids know to have another phone/camera(usually a friends) take a picture of their phone screen. 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... | |
| ▲ | seany 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's mostly dumb because of obvious analog loop holes. I at minimum carry 4 devices with cameras, often as many as 12. If I want to capture the disappearing message... I will do it; making it annoying just makes me pissed at the developer + the is. |
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| ▲ | chrsstrm 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "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" 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. | | |
| ▲ | MBCook 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The OS notifies the app after the screenshot is taken. The app doesn’t get to do anything in response to it being taken or allow it to be blocked. 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. | |
| ▲ | KennyBlanken 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's wrong. iOS sends an event on screenshot. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplicatio... |
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| ▲ | stronglikedan 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > This is the same technology that prevents you from accidentally screenshotting your password manager 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. | |
| ▲ | akersten 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Neither of those use cases seem good or tasteful to me as a user, I don't think this concept of "secure (from the user) context" should exist, but maybe that's just me | |
| ▲ | Barbing 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Can Snapchat no longer inform the other user when a screenshot was taken? | | |
| ▲ | jambalaya8 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | can someone just take a picture of the phone with another phone, or use a screen recorder? | | |
| ▲ | computably 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Security is never absolute, it always "merely" raises barriers. | | |
| ▲ | jambalaya8 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | lol. downvoting on this is quite dumb. 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. | | |
| ▲ | Barbing 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | mmm on average we’ve probably considered the photograph of a screen, and we were focused on: >To my knowledge, this is a misunderstanding. re: an OS informing an app of a user action (but didn’t downvote ya) | | |
| ▲ | jambalaya8 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | the other device then likely indexes it after a brief once-over by its own ai-enabled os. any crossover interactions, and it may as well be the same device. maybe some of you have not experimented enough with the theshold to have noticed yet. | | |
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| ▲ | applfanboysbgon 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think bsky's use of this malware feature is as benign as it's possible to get, but it's still a malware feature. As you point out, the real reason this exists is to enforce DRM and make your computer serve Netflix et al rather than the person who owns it. > 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. | | |
| ▲ | 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | [deleted] | | |
| ▲ | CircuitSeuss 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | As with most things, it would be ideal if we could have both good defaults to make things accessible and advanced user controls to allow users to retain control.
That’s a rare mix these days. | | |
| ▲ | MBCook 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | People like to say that. How many hundreds of additional options would a modern phone OS need to provide that though? How could applications possibly be tested?
You could have a million installs and 300,000 of them could easily have fully unique combinations of options past what’s available today. How could you ever provide support to a user? “First take 200 screenshots and send those to me…” |
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| ▲ | raincole 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > The app knowing I took a screenshot feels adjacent to me to a keylogger. 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. | | |
| ▲ | echoangle 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | But for completeness, iOS apps can detect screenshots. That’s what allows them to show annoying popups with a share option when you take a screenshot. | | |
| ▲ | edoceo 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | What? App-B on iOS knows when I'm taking a screenshot from App-Y? I don't have iOS to check but that seems crazy. | | |
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| ▲ | dc443 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | but you didn't read the part where the mechanism is explained? it doesn't do anything like capturing information. it just marks a button "sensitive" causing it to be hidden in a screenshot, thus revealing an icon that was put there underneath the button. | |
| ▲ | araeyn 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Did you read the article? Bluesky doesn't know you're taking a screenshot, iOS just hides the follow button in the screenshot (consequently making the Bluesky logo visible). | | |
| ▲ | LPisGood 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | iOS does tell the app that a screenshot was taken though | |
| ▲ | verdverm 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that". Found in the HN commenting guidelines, linked at the bottom of most pages | | |
| ▲ | araeyn 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Noted, I'll keep that in mind when commenting in the future. |
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| ▲ | fer 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > hostile and annoying 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. |
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| ▲ | mikepurvis 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I would happily use the Google Maps "share" feature, but I've yet to encounter any but the simplest of scenarios where it actually preserves the entire context of what I'm trying to share: the viewport, the start and destination, stops along the way, route choice, the time of day, all of it. 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. | | |
| ▲ | Waterluvian 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's of course about lock-in. In the early Web-GIS era there were a few competing but popular notation standards for sharing lat/lon/zoom/<sometimes more> that was meant to be human readable and compatible with any WMS or similar. 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. | | |
| ▲ | mikepurvis 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I think that's actually a separate issue. What I specifically want from a Google Maps share URL is for it to be something I can send over text that will reproduce for my recipient exactly what I see. 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) | | |
| ▲ | Waterluvian 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Hi! I think I’m on the same page (give or take a zoom level) now. That is hard to do between separate geodatabases (hence CRS, placenames, geocoding, etc.) but Google isn’t even doing it within their own. And the only way I can obtain a link is to first place a pin, which wants to snap to nearby features. If I try to link a nice trail near my home it snaps to the quarry instead, making me look like a maniac with a terrible idea of what a “quiet walk” looks like. | | |
| ▲ | mikepurvis 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I've noticed similar things with off-road biking as well. Hydrocut generally does an okay job of snapping to the trails there since Google knows about them, but I was at Rondeau this weekend, and Google kept insisting I was on the adjacent Lakeshore Rd rather than the Harrison trail [1] that I was actually on. And this had real consequences because my youngest and I had become separated from the rest of our group and were trying to use a "share my location" through Signal, but the Android system-supplied location used was the one that had been unhelpfully snapped to the road. [1]: https://www.alltrails.com/trail/canada/ontario/harrison-trai... | |
| ▲ | zrobotics 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The other reason someone might want a screenshot specifically isn't to share a location, but to share a route. For instance, I might want to text a friend a screenshot of my driving route. Maps can sometimes route weirdly, so this is definitely a use-case I've needed before. |
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| ▲ | thaumasiotes 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Google does provide an interoperable standard for communicating lat/lng pairs via text: https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/ I believe it was their response to what3words. It's not as good at the "communicating by text" use case as what3words. |
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| ▲ | 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | KennyBlanken 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I have a seething hatred for google maps links people send on mobile because Google no longer shows you the map in your mobile browser. It has for at least a year or twoo required Google Maps be installed to show you what the person linked to. |
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| ▲ | umeshunni 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Today I noticed that Amazon Pharmacy decided to blank out my prescription info that I was screenshotting to send to my doctor. WTF. | | |
| ▲ | AshamedCaptain 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | From the same lunacy that forces me to write my 30-something character Wi-Fi password on a "secure password field" that only shows me the last character, almost ensuring that I will make an unlimited number of typos and spend way too much time for something that should only take 30 seconds. 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. | | |
| ▲ | zrobotics 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That seems oddly user hostile for apple. Especially for Wi-Fi passwords, which are a very common thing to share. Android has had a feature for years that generates the password as a plaintext-encoded QR code so you can share a wifi password without the other party even needing to type it in. And at least on my pixel 9, I have a toggle on the password entry field to toggle visibility. 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. | |
| ▲ | Barbing 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Super secure!!1one 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.) | | |
| ▲ | doc_ick 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | . | | |
| ▲ | Barbing 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Was referring to the other point. Could write my own phone operating system to not be subject to the iOS WiFi password field display settings though! | | |
| ▲ | doc_ick 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | . | | |
| ▲ | Barbing 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Just need some help mining the ore to make sure it’s conflict free (OK would actually really like that if it were possible!) | | |
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| ▲ | Barbing 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Apple gave too much power to iOS developers. They can use DRM strong enough that when your iPhone is open in iPhone Mirroring on your Mac, and you record your Mac screen with a third-party tool, the iPhone screen is blacked out. | |
| ▲ | jerezzprime 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I bet this is the inverse problem. Someone thought "oh a prescription is definitely privacy sensitive information, I should ensure the OS does the right thing" not realizing this counter productive behavior. | | |
| ▲ | smelendez 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, health information is interesting in general because it needs to be kept strictly secret from unauthorized people, but people also often need or want to share their own information and have every legal and moral right to do so. |
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| ▲ | wolvoleo 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | And if you take a screenshot of a product in the Amazon app it hijacks that and copies a link instead. |
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| ▲ | water-drummer 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How else are they gonna track you? Think of the big tech | |
| ▲ | Razengan 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Blame Apple for even allowing apps to be aware of the user taking a screenshot. Just like their iCloud Keychain API that lets apps secretly track users across app reinstalls and device resets. | | |
| ▲ | bethekidyouwant 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Getting your account back on reinstall is good | | |
| ▲ | sfdlkj3jk342a 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's what a username and password are for. I'd rather not be forcibly tracked. | | |
| ▲ | chongli 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I have 200+ different passwords stored in iCloud Keychain, each 20+ characters long. How am I supposed to remember all of those? Do you use the same password on every site? How do you deal with data breaches? | | |
| ▲ | nemomarx 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | You can just use your own password manager and it wouldn't automatically do anything to apps on reinstall, right? Or a physical notebook, maybe. | | |
| ▲ | chongli 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I’d love to have my own password manager that syncs between all my devices without relying on a third party server, but I don’t know of one. Do you? A physical notebook is so easily lost I wouldn’t even consider it. | | |
| ▲ | daleswanson 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I use KeepassXC and Syncthing. It's not a single password manager doing both the managing and syncing, but it works very well, and I sync between phone/laptop/desktop without any third parties. | | |
| ▲ | chongli 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Do they work on iOS? | | |
| ▲ | clort 14 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Keepass database is an openly documented format, and there are several apps available on iOS that use it and can store the database in your iCloud (ie syncthing is not required, unless you need to sync to non-iOS devices) Just search for keepass in the app store (Keepassium, KeePass Touch, Strongbox, ...) |
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| ▲ | esseph 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Great name. Frank Dux was a fraud! :) |
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| ▲ | singpolyma3 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's massively confusing to users though. | |
| ▲ | OneLeggedCat 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Maybe, so long as it's optional. | |
| ▲ | Razengan 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I can fucking type my username and password, thank you. 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. | | |
| ▲ | doc_ick 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | . | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I thought your other comments about writing your own were sarcasm about how that's such a terrible situation if that's the kind of thing it would take. But this one looks like you actually mean it? Yikes. | | | |
| ▲ | Razengan 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Someone should follow you around saying that to you every time you complain about anything | | |
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| ▲ | Barbing 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Good thing if you have GMaps open to the directions list while driving and tell Siri to take a screenshot, it doesn’t throw up a full page of nonsense over your directions that only Voice Control (not Siri alone) or a [potentially nonexistent] passenger could close. Oh wait it absolutely does. |
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| ▲ | shiandow 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It still baffles me that it has become normal for an OS to place the wishes of an app above those of the user. 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. |
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| ▲ | javier2 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Did you read the post? Nothing is hijacked, but its a trick where they render the normal button in a ui element for secret data, which is blanked by the system on screenshot, revealing the logo underneath. Its a reasonable feature, so its hard for apple to control it better or remove this. | | |
| ▲ | xorcist 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That is a lot of words just to make it sound reasonable that a page can be exempt from the underlying screenshot functionality. It isn't. Not without asking the user. | |
| ▲ | nemomarx 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | users should have some way to control if screenshots have secret data in them or not, really. what if I do actually need to preserve it? | | |
| ▲ | edoceo 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I like your idea. When the screenshot is taken a user can have an option: Include Secrets? And the Apps can only hint at what to hide. |
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| ▲ | Analemma_ 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No, it’s not a reasonable feature. If I take a screenshot, I want the image to include what is displayed on my fucking screen, period. What is so difficult about this? | | |
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| ▲ | andai 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| When I take a screenshot in ChatGPT, it shows a "share this chat?" toast at the top. 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. |
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| ▲ | KennyBlanken 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yup, that's by design. They want to force you to "share" so they can both track who you interact with, and also try to convert the other person into a paying customer. |
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| ▲ | tchalla 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Side note- The Screenshot culture itself needs to die, sorry. Many a time, a share button simply works. I don’t know why people would share a screenshot or a map instead of pin and share their location. Yes there are cases where a screenshot helps but majority cases simply is “come to this place” a which turns out to make more difficult because people apparently don’t know how to share locations with pin and share! |
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| ▲ | FridgeSeal 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Many a time, a share button simply works 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. | |
| ▲ | dhruvrrp 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Screenshots are much better for archival. So many times you go back to a url/link you shared, and poof it's gone or the content has changed from when you sent it. Screenshots allows you to get a point in time reference to what you are sharing. | |
| ▲ | jasonjayr 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The ideal "World Wide Web" envisioned by it's original design, was that a URI was a durable pointer to an immutable piece of information. 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. | |
| ▲ | -0_0- 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In the case of sharing a link I have to remember/find where it is in each app, likely scroll through a long list of messaging (and for some reason non-messaging apps) to find the correct app, select the contact, and then pray that the link sent actually works for them and contains the correct information I'm seeing (very often the link will actually direct them to a web version of the app I'm using, then put a modal popup in front of the information asking them to use the app, then either send them to the app store, or send them to the app but strip out the actual information I linked and send them to a blank map). 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. |
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| ▲ | xnx 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There should be a layer of user control where the user can make the OS lie to the app. The app has no need to know when a screenshot or recording is happening, what the real location is, what file system contents are, etc. |
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| ▲ | qurren 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I also despise this "screenshot blocking" stuff. A device listens is supposed to me, not to the apps. I want a screenshot to be a copy of the raw pixels, and an app should not know about it or have a right to know about it. 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 |
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| ▲ | hod6654 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | GrapheneOS doesn't allow for it. You'd need a rooted device to bypass screenshot blocking | | |
| ▲ | qurren 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well damn, I would have thought rooting would have been a basic feature of GrapheneOS. At least it's open source, so maybe one can add root access and screenshot blocking to it. | | |
| ▲ | broodbucket 19 minutes ago | parent [-] | | GrapheneOS is concerned with security more than anything else, to which rooting is completely counterproductive |
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| ▲ | dev1ycan 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is what made me avoid chrome since release, I tried to right click a youtube channel background as a teen wanting to use it as a template to make my own channel background on photoshop... turns out they had disabled it, while I could on firefox. |
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| ▲ | 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| [deleted] |
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| ▲ | bigyabai 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > I wish, and wish only I can, that this trend goes away at some point. 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. |
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| ▲ | drdexebtjl 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | For Bluesky, sure. I think the comment was aimed at the trend. 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. | | |
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| ▲ | jambalaya8 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| agree with you. |
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| ▲ | alasano 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I hate the ChatGPT app and Spotify the most for their screenshot behavior. |
