alt Hacker NewsThis is phone OS developer's fault for even allowing it. When I take a screenshot, I expect to have an image of exactly whatever was displayed on the screen at the time. Its not a picture of your app, its a picture of my screen. Some banking apps used to (or still) prevent this and now some apps get a hook to insert their branding. My device serves some master other than myself.
Replies
1000%. Apps should not even be able to know that I've taken a screenshot - let alone change the contents of it.
Bluesky trick exposes how strange the abstraction is
So...
> 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.
iOS allows something similar. twitter (X) will also add a logo. I believe reddit did the same but i stopped using their app a while ago.
> I expect to have an image of exactly whatever was displayed on the screen at the time
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.
The thing that really irritates me about the banking apps blocking screenshots is that it's pretty clear to me it's not about protecting customers but denying customers the ability to document something related to their account.
if only there was some kind of app review process... but Apple doesn't care.
I guess the Bluesky bros got inspired by Threads, again.
This exists for a very good 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. 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.