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.
you can bypass this with a rootkit
i think they do it for security reasons. if you can take screenshots of sensitive data, so can malware. however, you should be able to disable it for netflix for example.
Yes, it’s simple, if you don’t want me to screenshot your software then don’t display it on my screen.
Samsung Internet and Iceraven (probably Firefox, Mull, etc. as well) both disable screenshots in their private modes by default. Thankfully, you can disable this functionality in their settings.
Oh I didn’t know you could disable it in Firefox!!! Dope
Well I don’t want to accidentally screenshot the porn I’m watching.
I don’t have much to add other than my agreement. They’ve been tightening the noose around our necks little by little for years now. But don’t worry, screenshots and copying and pasting text will return…as a microsubscription! /s
Android Premium! Get it nowow for only
$10$50/month.**Pricing subject to arbitary increases. 🤗
You can bypass this crap, but you’ll need to root your phone to achieve that.
Afterwards you’ll need to install magisk (superuser app) and a bunch of plugins: play integrity fix and playcurl_next (to simulate that your phone is unrooted), and then FlagSecurePatcher (which is the actual module that’s overriding the screenshot block.
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.
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.
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.
Don’t a lot of people use GrapheneOS?
it’s for pixel phones only.
People do but it’s Android. They asked for a non iOS non Android system.
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.
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.
Yep it’s bullshit I hate it too.
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. 🤷🏽♀️
using a secondary phone to take pictures of the screen intensifies
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.
I hate the whole bloody smartphone ecosystem for shit like this. Microsoft Palladium was widely seen as a nightmare scenario 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!!
fucking scrcpy
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 🤷🏼
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”
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.
Aaaah! I’m so frustrated by this BS. Its MY phone. It should be MY choice.
Switching to GrapheneOS soon, and if the bank app(s) don’t work, too bad. I’ll use a (Linux) computer.
I just switched to GraoheneOS and love it! All my financial apps worked out of the box.
GOS does allow taking screenshots, but they come out to be an empty black image.
Ah, same with E/OS, I’m just seeing now. Never thought to test that!
GOS allows that to be bypassed?
Well fuck me, I wanna use Samsung Tags to track my cat, so can’t really get a Pixel to use GOS.
Indoor/outdoor cats on average live shorter lives than indoor cats (as in between five and ten fewer years) so… If you want your car to live long don’t let them outside.
My cat is an indoor cat. Please stop making assumptions. Indoor cats can still escape. Its in case the cat gets out.
I believe you just need the smartThings app to track the tags, which is available to all Android devices. You could use GrapheneOS on a pixel and still use your trackers if you want.
Um no, it doesn’t work like that. Its not just an “app”, the app is just the interface, it require some deeper code that runs in the background to make the network work. Everyone who participates in the network needs their phone to be constantly scanning for other tags, and ig it were just the app, it would get easily killed by the OS, so they made it part of samsung’s OneUI, and require OneUI
Also: The second reason it quire Samsung Phone is, I speculate, that its also to incentive people buying Samsung Phone over other brands, which in this case, they succeeded. Having access to such a huge network is very powerful, tile doesn’t have such a large network like Samsung or Apple, and since I dislike iOS, my only other option is Samsung, or I’d have to pay a monthly subscription for a cat tracker which would be terrible and very heavy for my cat to wear (and also you need to charge those batteries every 2 weeks, unlike a bluetooth tag that can last months). Samsung is very clever at getting more phone sales.
Google has find my device tags as well just FYI that utilize all modern android devices, so probably a larger network than Samsung’s but smaller than apples
I read about it and sounds cool, but inferior to Samsung’s smart tags (or Apple’s airtags, for that matter).
If you didn’t know already, let me explain:
Smart tags that are powered by Google’s Find My network doesn’t work as well because Google’s Find My Network settings default to a setting that requires Multiple devices to scan the tag before the server reveals the tag’s location to you.
Sure you might say its for “privacy” and I understand Google is trying to be very noble here. But when my cat goes missing (god-forbid, hopefully never happens) I don’t need this fake “nobelness” and “privacy-concious” mindset, I need for my tags to work and for me to find my cat. Google be selling all your info then suddenly wanna pretend like they’re some saint when it comes to these tags, bruh the location of the tag is already reported to Google servers, they’re just hiding it from your view until they decide enough devices has scanned it. Wtf Google, what’ the point of that?
Both Samsung and Apple tags show the location after one device scanning it and reporting the location, Google’s however, requires Multiple. Yea just find some youtube video comparison and you see the difference. Google’s shit is junk.
Also on top of the issue mentioned above the Samsung Tags have been out for years, Google’s have only been recently releases, and is buggy and essentially in beta-testing.
I recently bought Samsung tags to track my cat, too. The app is available on Pixel but it doesn’t allow me to pair with the tag, so no, it’s a bit more complicated
I fuckin hate that Playstation 4 and 5 do this for taking screenshots from movies. I just want to get a good screen grab for meme purposes! Do you think I’m going to screen shot every goddamn frame of a movie, one at a time, paste those back together as a video, then somehow rip the audio too, and then share this necromantically-assembled abomination with all my pirate buddies? Fuck you!
And that’s why you should refuse to pay a penny and just pirate everything by default. If you feel like supporting the creators, donate to their union strike fund.
god bless Digital Restrictions Management
Now that is really stupid, especially given how easy it is to just fire up the movie on your PC and take a screenshot from there.
Netflix does this on windows too
I was able to use snipping tool to take screenshots when I had Netflix, but I also used it through my browser.
Udemy blocks this so netflix must. I try to screen shot sometimes for educational purposes and it always ends up as a blank screen.
Surely it blocks snipping tools new recording feature on windows 11 though right?
I wouldn’t doubt it, but I’ve never used Windows 11 and never will >.>
I work for a company that builds an app /sdk that handles credit cards / payments. It’s one of the (many) requirements for getting an industry standard certification (like PCIDSS / MPOC). The app Must block screenshots, and Must disable the camera while using it…
What on earth are those in charge of certification standards thinking they’ll achieve with requirements like this?
The same functionality that you use to take screenshots can be hijacked by bad actors to get access to your stuff. It’s especially bad if they can see your MFA apps or other sensitive info.
Not saying the functionality is always used for the best of intentions, but there are many situations where I see it as necessary.
It’s probably to stop third party apps from screenshoting the banking app.
Why is this only a problem on mobile? Why doesn’t desktop have similar requirements?
tbh the security settings on desktop devices tend to be more lax in general; for example almost any desktop pc has an open bootloader, means you can sideload an operating system from usb. The consequence is that no password-at-login will protect your private data; only full disk encryption can.
Smartphones on the other hand often have a fully-locked bootloader, which means it’s totally non-trivial to install an alternative operating system. especially, it often contains wiping any data on the smartphone, so an attacker with access to the device can’t simply install their own OS and read the internal storage.
I don’t know.
Accidentally screenshotting your bank acct and routing number is the only one I can really think of.
Or your “time clock earth sounds” app from the not so well policed appstore takes silent background screenshots, grayscales them and sends them to their host for OCR.
I agree this permission is annoying. But I differ in I feel it should be system controlled and can be invoked by apps that identify specific fields to be blocked, instead ofnjusy disabling it outright.
Not sure how this is relevant, these numbers are routinely shared with clients and suppliers.
Why did you capitalize “must”?
Probably a nod to the written style of RFC definitions, which have the word entirely in capital letters, as in… the implementation MUST do such and such, and SHOULD do this other thing. In this case, the relevant security standard(s)
We have italics and bold characters for that.
RFCs were being written back when line printers couldn’t do either.
I misread your comment and thought you said “RFK”. I have no idea what an “RFC” is. Some sort of teletype thing?
RFCs are Requests For Comment, published technical documents describing proposed standards.
