Not sure if this is the correct place to post, but I just wanna kinda rant a bit.
I’m not the only one that hates this, right?
An app can just do a “This App Does Not Allow Screenshots”? Like… wtf?
Like, its my phone, and some app can just decide to disable a fuction of my phone. It’s my phone and if I wanna take a screenshot, I’m taking a screenshot. I don’t care about whatever “security” the app developer wants.
Imagine if every online shopping app whether fast food or amazon, just used this to block you from taking a screenshot so you can’t save the records in case of a dispute.
Which android developer thought it was a good idea to let an app disable a function on your phone. Even iPhone doesn’t have this stupid concept.
Sorry for the rant.
Anyone wanna share your stories?
(P.S. I have a cheap secondary phone to take photos of the screen. “This App Does Not Allow Screenshots” my ass lmao, I’m taking the screenshot whether the app wants it or not.
I just open my tab switcher, then take a screenshot from there =P
You mean the “recent apps”?
What Android version?
In any recent Android versions, anything within the app in the “recent apps” would show as all white or all black in any screenshots or screen recordings.
Yes, ‘recent apps’; I never knew the name. Currently using Android v14, this method still works fine for me.
Doesn’t work on android 15 for me
i have 6.1 and am fully updated, and this still works for me
Android 6.1? (Not OneUI 6.1 right?)
Its must be an old unpatched bug.
(Btw, how long have you been holding onto the device? Its amazing your phone survived that long.)
If its OneUI 6.1, then thats weird, since I’m also on OneUI 6.1 and it doesn’t work.
OneUI 6.1 is Android 14 btw, Android Version =/= OneUI Version
iPhone absolutely has this concept
Interesting, I never seen an app in iOS that can block screenshots.
You can’t screen shot in streaming apps like Netflix and Disney. When you do the resulting image is just a black screen
I find this shit hilarious.
Who the fuck is pirating a damn thing by screen shotting their phone? Can I smash the buttons 30 times a second in order to be able to reproduce the movie? No, absolutely not.
In reality, people will be taking a screen shot in order to share something, giving free publicity to Netflix. So what actually happens is that I torrent the thing I want to make a gif of, or share a frame from, thereby leaving an incentive for the people who provide the torrents to keep on keeping on.
Ticketmaster.
I remember one (snapchat maybe?) that couldn’t block it so it just alerted the other person you took the screenshot. Maybe it’s changed in a decade.
You can hit “take screenshot” but it results in a black frame iirc. Same for screen record.
I know Netflix has/had this if you video recorded. I thought I found a great way to download shows/movies until it was just a black screen.
I’ve seen public transportation apps doing that to curb sharing the ticket/barcode with someone else.
Time to split screen and taking a selfie via a mirror lmao
Like, its my phone, and some app can just decide to disable a fuction of my phone.
Is it your phone though?
Your physical phone hardware belongs to you.
The Android operating system is licensed for your use as Free and Open Source Software.
All the other Google bits and blobs are licensed to you by Google.
Some days I’m not even sure if I own the shoes on my feet or if they’re just licensed to me.
Yes, and we should not give app developers a free pass because “everybody is doing it”.
🙃
It should be, but the reality is that is isn’t.
This thing is super annoying. Maybe there is some xposed module to bypass this . i don’t known my phone isn’t rooted.
Ironically, Google’s new creepy Circle to Search feature gets to override the screenshot denial lockout that Google themselves created.
Of course. When you run a monopoly, you get to make your own rules.
EU should force Google to open Android back up.
Wanna know what’s even more fucked up? Few years back, I had exactly this problem. Searched the internet for a solution. Guess what?
Enable Google Voice Assistant and say “Ok Google. Take a screenshot.” Google magically has the rights to make a screenshot on the App that doesn’t let you, the user, take the screenshot.
Next phone I get is gonna be something with a alternate OS, no Android or iOS.
So, the very thing the block claims to block, is completely allowed lol genius
That OS won’t have those banking apps in the first place, so what’s the difference to just not installing them on Android?
android allows programs to prevent screenshots, which is defective by design https://www.defectivebydesign.org/
Good luck with finding an alternative. I tried running a Pinephone Pro with Linux and it was just too buggy to use.
If your current phone lasts 4 more years it might be ok software wise but good god is it bad now.
I realistically only need to have mobile data, run Signal, Discord, possibly WhatsApp, and have a working browser… Hm. I hope that works.
If you are ok with a 4-5 hour battery life then this should work. They all have Linux clients. The problem is that there is no notification infrastructure. The phone just runs like a desktop the whole time. If you sleep the phone you don’t get alerts.
Don’t a lot of people use GrapheneOS?
Yes, I use GrapheneOS myself, but just know that it doesn’t make any changes to AOSP other than privacy and security enhancements. Apps can still prevent you from taking screenshots on GrapheneOS.
it’s for pixel phones only.
People do but it’s Android. They asked for a non iOS non Android system.
This is a hot tip, thank you! Just confirmed in my banking app, no overlay or notification but the screenshot appeared in my photos
Drives me nuts too! Signal at least has a toggle for it, so the user can decide. I wish more apps would do the same, maybe with a pop up warning explaining the risks.
Yep it’s bullshit I hate it too.
I like that it’s possible, but I think it should be treated like a permission with a user accessible toggle in settings for each app.
I would like to see the same thing for clipboard read access. In the same way app has to prompt you for location permission it would have to prompt you to read the clipboard and you would actually have the option to allow it all the time which is handy for some apps like clipboard manager, or don’t allow it alltogether which is handy for some random apps you don’t trust.
It’s a really good feature imo and I’d love to see it be more common. This is how iOS does it:
It could be nice, but also annoying in some cases. I would at least want to have an option to allow all the time.
and preferably an option of “ask everytime as yes no”
Oh yea, something needs to be done about the clipboard. It’s unsettling to know that a random app can just get your clipboard. Sometimes bitwarden doesn’t detect a password field for some reason so I have to copy it to the clipboard 😖 don’t feel safe…
You can install Shizuku and AppOps to set default permissions for new apps and limit clipboard permission for installed apps.
I’m assuming those require root?
I’m not really into rooting. More attack vectors. I have rooted in the past and managed to brick some phones, not really in the moods to destroying stuff.
Does it have a virtual keyboard?
I believe Bitwarden has a setting to “wipe” the clipboard after some time.
Not perfect, but better
The security argument is a lie, I think. I think websites like Netflix like these features so it’s difficult to approach copying a video.
If security were an issue I don’t think you’d be able to copy text to the clipboard in situations where you can’t screenshot.
Microsoft teams limits your clipboard to 500 characters when you try to copy on the app. Of course blocks screenshots too. If I’m on a meeting that isn’t being recorded, I now have no way of saving any pertinent information, and the ones that ARE recorded get automatically deleted after 30 days. 🤷🏽♀️
In litigation, if one side destroys evidence beforehand, or goes to great lengths to deliberately not collect it, courts instruct juries to presume against the side that destroyed the evidence. Companies that think they’re being clever by using apps that auto-delete records aren’t as clever as they think they are. This Teams feature is obviously meant to make it difficult to assist in corporate malfeasance. Using Teams is now a liability risk to companies.
30 days is set by your company. Ours is set to 90 days. Stupid, on my opinion. If I recorded it, I obviously want to keep it. For this reason, I user OBS on my computer and record meetings through that. Bypass teams’s recording framework altogether.
OBS?
Sorry. Open broadcaster software. While not really intended for this use case, it works great for it.
I can confirm, OBS Studio is perfect for recording Microsoft Teams sessions. Other parties are not aware of the recording unlike Teams built-on recording.
Probably works for every similar application as well.
Oh, it does lol. If it’s images on the screen and audio through the output, OBS can record it. It’s awesome!
Open Broadcast Software
Open-Source screen recording and streaming software
I hate the whole bloody smartphone ecosystem for shit like this. Microsoft Palladium was widely seen as a nightmare scenario a couple decades ago when it proposed ceding a bunch of user control to the OS and app developers a couple decades ago, even by the mainstream press. It seems Apple and Google used it as a roadmap, likely because people don’t know how to use computers, and that doesn’t seem to be improving.
The part of the modern mobile OS security model that does have merit is that apps aren’t trusted. The PC model, even in multiuser operating systems with fancy permissions was that apps are user agents which are always doing something the user asked for, and therefore trusted as much as the user. The glut of spyware for Windows in the early 2000s proved that false.
The fact that somebody else doesn’t know how to use a computer shouldn’t force me to cede control over mine to participate in the modern world. Root is a bit of an escape hatch, but it’s a blunt instrument on Android, and Google tries to help app developers stop me from using that as well. I’m starting to feel like Richard Stallman was right about everything and I should go be a digital hermit, only running software I compiled from source.
Wow that blog post is from 2013? I wouldn’t have guessed if not for the references to 3G.
I just read it myself, as a “mature age” student at University in 2024 I have often sarcastically asked some of the 18-21 cohort in the class if they need the old person to show them how to use a computer when they don’t even know that a “program” for a PC/Mac is just another word for “app” even the teachers look shocked when you hear most of the class nod in agreement about not knowing what software actually is and that it can be installed without an “App Store”.
I think the thing is most people just see computers and tech as just another appliance the same as a microwave and to know anything more than “turning it on and off again” is just seen as far too nerdy or a waste of time when they can get on the internet and read their influencers on social media or just watch YouTubers instead….
But they are the first to complain when “the internet doesn’t work!!”
That blog could have been written today!!
Man, my banking app recently switched to a different keyboard. One that doesn’t allow integrations like bitwarden. I also cannot copy paste my password into the password field so I have to enter my 32 character password by hand.
Mind you, this is not an app that does ANY banking in the first place it is just to authorize access to my bank account or for transactions.
So it is always a few minutes copying the password, making sure I haven’t miss-typed on the shitty keyboard or because of my sausage fingers and then being logged out of my bank account in the browser because it took so much time copying that password.
This type of dumbass design is the reason we have passwords like password12345.
I hate this “feature” of the Dexcom GCM app. They seem to believe that HIPPA law prevents me from sharing my glucose readings with anyone I choose to.
To send readings to people, I can’t screenshot the app but I can screenshot the notification which contains the same info 🤷🏼
Yep, same with the-shitty ass Kaiser Permanente app, which itself is just a webview wrapper around the crappy kp.org website. I cannot screenshot my test results, or any other screen within the app, but I can go to the same-ass page in my browser and take my screenshot from the website.
Just move to xdrip+, its better in every way than that steaming pile of garbage dexcom puts out. If your endo DEMANDS you use clarity and refuses ti use tidepool, you can generate a version of the dexcom app that outputs locally, and xdrip+ functions normally, and you can relegate the dexcom app to being opened every 3 months.
I love all the work people have put into the open source tools for this, because the first party apps are all garbage for “Fda approval reasons”
fucking scrcpy
If only that didn’t require a PC - like an Android version that could run on your tablet to copy your phone’s screen.
Many phones can work in usb host mode. I’ll see if such a rooted phone can be used to capture screen over adb with perhaps a modified scrcpy. Or run normal scrcpy in a freedesktop rootfs container. Sounds like a fun side project.
When I first was researching scrcpy, I found a thread (probably under “issues” on the GitHub repository for scrcpy) where someone else requested the same. They then went on to create a prototype using Java that the author of scrcpy seemed impressed with, but that was as far as it went. The prototype was based on a very old version (1.x) of scrcpy, so I never bothered trying it. Might be usable for this purpose, however.
