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.
Whatsapp also does this shit. You can’t screenshot a conversation (it comes back black). I am going Chinese for my next phone.
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!