This is absurd... Why are the apps alerted when the user is taking a screenshot? Why can they even block that action?
How can people even change that since Android is directly controlled by Google?
Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
11–20 of 385 posts
Re: Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
#12It was a bug - this time. It's not your phone, you're just using it.
It’s to prevent you screenshotting snaps / disappearing messages sent to you or to prevent screenshotting licensed content. This is good for 99% of the people.
It would still be possible to use external camera to capture the content.
Re: Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
#13Anyone else noticed that you can't take screenshots on Android when using Chrome Incognito mode? "Can't take screenshot due to security policy". I don't understand the rationale behind it. Why can't I take a screenshot of my own phone?
Both Chrome and Firefox disable screenshots in private mode. I assume that this helps defend against 3rd-party programs running in the background that might save screenshots unbeknowst of the user.
Re: Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
#14This is absurd... Why are the apps alerted when the user is taking a screenshot? Why can they even block that action? How can people even change that since Android is directly controlled by Google?
Presumably, apps could use the screenshot API to extract private information from other apps
Re: Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
#15This is absurd... Why are the apps alerted when the user is taking a screenshot? Why can they even block that action? How can people even change that since Android is directly controlled by Google?
Presumably, apps could use the screenshot API to extract private information from other apps
You'd think that a user-initiated screenshot should be distinguishable from a API initiated one, though.
In my experience, it mainly seems to be banking and messaging apps that monitor or block screenshot events.
Re: Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
#16Fun fact: 5/6 years ago, a bunch of Huawei phones came with world readable /dev/fb0 (framebuffer) device files. This made it trivial for any application to read the display, totally bypassing any Android screenshot/screen recording API (not that one existed at the time). Some of those devices also had readable /dev/event/input* files, which allowed touchscreen interaction to be monitored.
Sounds like a good backdoor with plausible deniability ("the dev forgot to restore permissions").
Re: Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
#17Anyone else noticed that you can't take screenshots on Android when using Chrome Incognito mode? "Can't take screenshot due to security policy". I don't understand the rationale behind it. Why can't I take a screenshot of my own phone?
Relevant crbug: https://crbug.com/985245
If you use Chrome Canary you can now enable a feature flag under this URL:
chrome://flags#incognito-screenshot
Re: Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
#18At least Apple has not done anything as user-hostile as this, yet. On iOS the balance of control is still in the user's favor, not the apps', and increasing with every release (like discrete permissions, limited location sharing, being able to choose which photos each app can see).
How is that user-hostile?
Re: Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
#19It was a bug - this time. It's not your phone, you're just using it.
It’s to prevent you screenshotting snaps / disappearing messages sent to you or to prevent screenshotting licensed content. This is good for 99% of the people.
> prevent screenshotting licensed content. [..] good for 99% of the people
Is this a parody, or do you truly think DRM is good?
Re: Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably, apps could use the screenshot API to extract private information from other apps
You'd think that a user-initiated screenshot should be distinguishable from a API initiated one, though. In my experience, it mainly seems to be banking and messaging apps that monitor or block screenshot events.
If a user initiated screenshot was distinguishable from an API initiated one, then you could argue third party screenshotting apps aren't first class citizens on the platform