You can use scrcpy (https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy) to bypass the policy if you really need to have a screenshot. All you need is to have a Linux laptop at hand, debug mode enabled, and a USB cable plugged in. Super simple stuff right? (this is satire!)
Now, I'm as frustrated as anybody else here that I'm forbidden to use whatever feature I want from MY phone, for which I paid, with MY MOENY (and nobody else's apart from mine). But then again, what choice do I have? Not buy a phone? Switch to what? There are no viable and practical alternatives. It's a "take it or leave it" situation.
> Now, I'm as frustrated as anybody else here that I'm forbidden to use whatever feature I want from MY phone, for which I paid, with MY MOENY
Samsung disabled the oxygen sensor (SPO2) on their phones for Canada. For other countries they moved access for the SPO2 feature further into the Samsung Health app. But for Canada SPO2 sensor access is gone not accessible.
No warning (probably buried in an email) just one day my SPO2 sensor stopped working. I suppose it was due to some legal thing but it certainly pissed me off. I'm never buying Samsung again why blow $1000 on a phone only to have physical hardware disabled?
Same frustration with samsung, they always undo settings I customized buried deep in the settings menu somewhere and this constant cat and mouse game trying to figure out what has changed so I can change it back to my preferences is infuriating to say the least. Respect my menu settings Samsung, you lost a customer for life! I'm all in on Apple when the right black friday iphone deal drops later this month.
This is the same reason I dropped Windows completely recently. I kept having settings changed and would have to make group policy to get them to stick. Not allowing me to turn of automatic updates really grinded my gears too.
What happened to letting the user at the very least have the choice to just disable all of the hand holding?
This is precisely why I am a hardcore Mac user, the settings are straightforward and do not auto-revert and fail to stick anywhere close to the level of Windows.
Maybe some kind of patent infringement settlement in that area? Or liability? A specific region feels like an ip or legal issue...
I see this thread below and there is a phone number you could call to get answers. I believe there are legit sites with older versions of apks you might try as a test.
Why should you, as a consumer, care about internal legal issues between the manufacturer of your phone and some other company? If the manufacturer decides, for whatever reason, to remove features from the phone after you purchased it, I think it is reasonable for the transaction to be reversed, i.e. refund me the full amount for the phone and I will return the phone.
If a publisher is found to have published a book without license, would it be reasonable to find all who bought the book, break into their homes, take the book, and leave in its place the purchase price in cash?
If not, then why is doing the same, but on a computer, remotely reasonable?
If you’re geeking out on health data, would you entertain an Apple Watch? It features an O2 sensor which to my knowledge hasn’t been neutered. Do you think it’s a patent issue? I recall Apple modifying the active noise cancellation in the AirPods Pro.
They tell you up front though, as far as I know they’ve never sold a health sensor into a country and then disabled it later, which is what it sounds like parent comment is describing
I have a Samsung Galaxy S8+ I used the SPO2 sensor all the time. Then I think it was last year (2019) when it was removed without warning. But like I said Samsung probably buried that info in 5000 lines of an update notification.
I can understand new devices being sold would not have the device enabled due to some patent or legal issue. But to have Samsung disable a physical device on a two year old phone is frustrating. I bought the phone I own it Samsung shouldn't allowed to do such a thing or at least make it more obvious and give the option to opt out of the change.
Thats because of legal reasons. ECG is a medical feature that most countries require meets medical accuracy standards which it likely does not in many countries.
I'd love an Apple watch, but they don't support even basic functionality with Android (albeit maybe due to hardware incompatibility). Seems like they miss a market to be honest, Apple Watch is clearly the best on the market.
Linux phones!!! There’s still a lot of dev work to be done but this is exactly why I’m on board with the pinephone. not a daily driver yet, but if you’re a programmer looking for something to contribute to, go check it out
He wants to cross a bridge without paying a toll. Telling him that he can take a rickety bridge, an unsupported bridge, build his own bridge, or wait for a new bridge to be finished doesn't get him to the other side.
I crossed that bridge when I came to it - trip trap! trip trap! trip trap! - and lo! I heard a voice: "Who is it what cross my bridge? I am very hungry, and I will eat you up!!" Shuddering in fear, I told the hungry troll "I am but a tiny me. You should eat my brother who comes along soon!" The greedy troll, let me go, and I watched from the bushes as the troll gobbled up my brother. I was sad, but then remembered that I am still alive, not eaten
I got so sick of these kind of shenanigans, I built a simple, non-mobile phone with a Raspberry Pi 3B+, a Raspberry Pi 7 inch touchscreen, and a Logitech headset. It runs off Wi-Fi or Ethernet only.
It does voice and SMS only, but it does what it does very well. I wrote all the software myself (Python3 and C).
I've been using this as my daily driver for over a year now.
I'm planning to make it available to the public soon. All of it will be open source, of course. My goal is an open source alternative to Apple/Google.
I'll post here on hacker news once I get a web site up and running. Look for a post from this user name (another_comment). I'll also post here in the comments of appropriate posts.
I believe there are even actual Google employees that read these forums. And barring them, I believe there are even tech executives responsible for these policies that read this forum.
It's as if the last 30 years of technical evolution never happened and we are back at faxing signed forms and for extra security and applying triple rot-13 to guarantee no unauthorized access.
Yeah the big tech companies want to destroy the ecosystem of opportunity they benefited from, in order to protect their power. If it means a world with more needless bullshit for everyone, so be it
Sadly reminds me of the very early days of online video, where speed runners would video their televisions because screen capture devices were terribly expensive.
I'm not so sure. Back in my Windows days (95? 98, maybe?) if I played a DVD on my computer, the window that the video was playing in would be black if I took a screenshot.
A lot of early computer DVD playing was using hardware accelerated decode, with the resulting images bypassing the framebuffer. That means it won't show up on your screenshots, but it wasn't necessarily detecting a a screenshot and blanking the output (although, once software decoding was feasible, that may also have happened).
I remember this. I also remember the colour of the video window was something like 030303 and if you had that colour on any other window (including your wallpaper) you would see the video there as well.
Won't unlocking the bootloader make banking apps not work anymore? Had this issue when I tried LineageOS on my old phone, and I really like the convenience of those apps as opposed to using the website, which is extremely bad.
Also, how do I do all you said above? (I need a step by step tutorial). Also is it reversible? Are there any other security implications?
> Won't unlocking the bootloader make banking apps not work anymore?
Depends on how paranoid your bank is. There's this SafetyNet thing that checks for "system integrity". It's part of Google Services. For now, it's possible to bypass these checks using Magisk, but I've read that Google is testing the new method involving TrustZone — a hardware trusted execution environment within the SoC where you aren't one of the trusted parties.
> Also, how do I do all you said above? (I need a step by step tutorial).
There should be plenty on xda-developers.com
> Also is it reversible?
On Google devices, yes, completely. You can reflash the factory images that Google provides and relock the bootloader. On others... it varies, on Samsung especially.
> Are there any other security implications?
If you leave the bootloader unlocked, anyone with physical access to your device will be able to reboot it into the bootloader and load arbitrary code with OS kernel privileges. From there they'll be able to modify the installed system. They won't be able to read the /data partition [right away] because it's encrypted with your password/pattern.
IMO it's really a shame you can't re-lock the bootloader with your own signing key.
TIL about `fastboot flash avb_custom_key`. Certainly better than nothing, but seeing how it shows a warning on each boot in this mode, it most probably trips SafetyNet as well.
The worst I've found is a few apps that complain and push a bullshit scare story at you ("your device is insecure" LOL. My house is technically less secure because I have a key to it, too). Bank accounts are commodities and most banks have no monthly fees with no minimum balances. The easy answer is to choose banks based on who doesn't engage in user-hostile shenanigans (see also: snake oil "2FA"). Moving between accounts over the course of a few months is quite easy, especially if you do not write checks.
Also, if the phone has a vendor supported way of unlocking the bootloader, it will typically also trigger a wipe / factory reset (presumably because to keep DRM enforcers etc happy).
Your mileage might vary, but I'm using 4 banking app (one of them even disallow taking screenshot in Android 10) but they are working on custom rom (lineageos) with unlocked bootloader as long as I don't install root.
It's a cat-and-mouse game and unfortunately over the past handful of years it's been a losing battle for root hiding. It's why I gave up bothering with root despite having done it for nearly a decade.
If you live in a country where you have to use your phone for banking and can't use the web then you need to talk to your politicians. That seems like a pretty extreme violation of your freedom.
As much as I dislike the US at least we don't have that.
I live in the UK and have used 5 banking apps so far (not all of them at the same time):
- Barclays (App won't work with LineageOS, website is horrible).
- Monzo (App only, no website, works with LineageOS).
- Revolut (App only, no website, works with LineageOS).
- TransferWise (Web and App, both work well, but never tried it on LineageOS).
- ING Home Bank (App won't work with LineageOS, website is manageable, but still a pain compared to the app).
Of course I don't have to use any of these, but there are clear advantages to using any of them, depending on the situation (you wouldn't take a mortgage from TransferWise, split bills with Barclays, and hold foreign currency in Monzo, mainly because they don't support that). Also you don't have to use a phone, just walk around without one, make people email you instead of calling, and ask people for directions instead of looking at a GPS map.
My point is, I paid for my phone (me alone, nobody else chipped in) so I want to use every feature it provides without restrictions, as it is my property. That goes for both taking screenshots and using apps. And when it's not possible, I look for alternatives. Right now none are practical, nor feasible, so all I got left are tricks like scrcpy and rants on forums ;).
Question: if there's no website, how TF are you supposed to use Monzo or Revolut from a proper computer? Is there really no way to do something simple like xfer money or view balance without using your phone? If so, why did you even open an account, I'm assuming that since you are on this site you are at least a little bit technically inclined.
Just looked, and apparently Revolut is 1) app only 2) tied to a mobile number. So not only is it annoying to use, but likely also susceptible to sim jacking. Again, why would anyone want to use this; I hate having to deal with wells fargo (they bought a loan I have) but even they seem less crappy. Not trying to hate on OP, I'm just shocked at how crap their service appears to be.
> Question: if there's no website, how TF are you supposed to use Monzo or Revolut from a proper computer?
You can't. That's why you don't use them for serious work.
> why did you even open an account
Different use cases, different circumstances. I don't depend on them but they give good exchange rates and zero fees when transferring or spending money abroad. It's the "it just works" and "fast and cheap" effect that the traditional banks don't have. And opening an account is done online, and you get access to your account in hours, compared to Barclays which took 2 months of ping pong, when I first moved into the UK (since I did not have a bill issued in my name at my UK address I could not open an account, so I could not pay my landlord rent so I could get an address to open an account, fun times). Without that Monzo account I could have not been paid in my first 2 months.
But if you want to know how crap Revolut really is, try contacting their support to report a bug in their app, they don't have an email, but instead ask you to get in touch with them on Facebook.
Oh wow, that's even worse than I thought. Thanks for the explanation, that does make sense. I wonder if they could get in trouble for AML, or possibly Barclay's is just being overly picky with who they want as customers.
But seriously, not even a support email? Good God, I would trust PayPal with my money more than that; but I suppose they needed to hit all the fintech bingo buzzwords.
They have to do a KYC (know your client) check, which I assume they do a credit check on you, probably via Experian or another one of these. You also send a picture of your ID, and record a video of yourself saying "Hello, I'm $NAME and I want to open an account with $COMPANY".
The Barclay's part is just an old practice. How I ended up doing it after two months was by having a letter from my employer stating that I'm registered with them at a particular address. But what I learned from somebody else that went through this, after those two months, is that they could have said my "home" address was the address the company is registered at instead. This is how they've used to do it with other people that have hit this problem, it just didn't occur to me to ask for something like this, and it didn't occur to them to suggest this either since they assumed I had everything in order (since I already submitted my Monzo account for salary payments).
Monzo have a pretty comprehensive API that you can build your own web based interface around if you wish. If you look on github a ton of people have done that, all you need to do is clone the repo, plop in your Monzo api key and the jobs a goodun.
Monzo only seems to have and login for their business accounts. For personal accounts it's still phone only. And business accounts are a recent addition.
Revolut has login now, but you can't do anything there, except viewing your balance and blocking your card. And this is a new thing, maybe and beta version, otherwise they would have officially announced it somewhere, like in the bragging emails they like to send from time to time.
Some banks and bank-like products only make themselves available by mobile app. It's a commercial decision, and seems to have been a trend with some "challenger" banks.
I have two of those, and I chose them because of unique banking features (not the mobile app) not offered by other banks which I found valuable. It's nothing to do with the country.
To be honest it would be nice to have web access as well (or even phone banking), but we take what we can get.
It's never safe to bank from a computer you can't control. I would always consider a phone to be compromised. These are the richest targets going for exploits so why risk it.
Although I agree with you, it turns out which banks and similar facilities you use can greatly affect the amount of credit you have access to, how you can use it, and how long the process takes.
During this pandemic I've found that to be a big deal, much more important than whatever technology or access method is offered.
In Thailand the bank I have, Kasikorn, charges for ATM usage outside of the registered province even from the same network... UNLESS you use their cardless withdraw that uses some QR code for TOTP that requires the app (that will attempt to block phones with root access). You can use the website as well for some things, but it requires SMS-based OTP with no supported alternatives.
I'd switch banks or at least branches to this new province, but my current visa won't allow it (and for whatever reason, you cannot transfer accounts but need to open a new one).
It's not only the challenger banks: nowadays banks will also encourage you to use their app for 2FA. You can use a proprietary token instead, but you'd have to pay for it (the app instead is free). 2FA sms is not supported with some banks (and that's good).
I think the UK is an exception, since for 2 of the banks I had accounts with, they just used a 2nd "memorable" password as "2FA" (avoiding the requirement of a smartphone)
In which kind of bubble do you live where not making web apps available for your clients is seen as an extreme violation of freedom? As long as it is possible to go to the bank to do whatever you need to do, I do not think politicians have anything to say.
Sometimes you don't have to, but it's much more convenient. For example, I can use my bank app just with my fingerprint. To use the web app, I either have to login with my phone (reading a QR code) or have to use one of those devices where you insert your card and enter a couple of codes (if I find it...).
If some bank tells me I have to use certain app to make business with them, it's my choice to do it or not, but they are not violating my freedom. And I find saying this is an "extreme violation of your freedom" insulting for those who are actually seeing their freedom violated.
A dangerous game on anything other than Xiaomi phones these days, the only company to provide official bootloader unlock software, but yeah otherwise, go download it from some shady website and not have a care in the world about the most sensitive device you own.
> install Xposed
Last updated 2014 :\
You'd be safer shooting heroin into your eyeballs than installing Android root software from 6 years ago.
There are definitely more manufacturers that provide an official way to unlock. For some others you have to remove the backplate and short some pins or whatever. These days it's probably more convenient to just use one of those root boxes though.
Prove me wrong anytime folks, I'm sure you can at least flail around and try, or at least mash the squeal button that you all like so much.
How exactly do you unlock bootloaders from modern phones (past 2 years)? You get jailbreaks from the internet and sideload them right? Do you disassemble the binary code? Does it void your warranty? Which mobile device manufacturers offer official bootloader unlocks today? There's only one I know of.
Did i happen to mention the big bad China company in a good light to warrant such disdain for my as yet undisputed comment? Is that the problem here?
You install adb from Google and run one command. That's how you unlock a bootloader.
As for root, yes you have to install something which is Magisk which is open source and vetted and had been around for around 5+ years.
My wife that has never done it just did it for her new pixel 4a a few weeks ago. All I did was direct her to a step my step tutorial (I vetted the tutorial) and she did it flawlessly.
My Samsung A40 from 2019 has an unlock bootloader option in the Developer Options. I didn't check what it does neither I googled it but it's promising.
Sorry but it is not really your phone if it runs proprietary software. It is like in medieval times, you didn't own the means of production. Welcome your new digital overlords!!
There is a kind of half-formed philosophy out there which believes we can get back to some false utopian small-collective agri-mercantile worker paradise.
It doesn't exist, and never did. Learn how to adapt and make the most of the systems that exist now.
I dare to say, if you even actually achieved those fantastical scenarios, the damper on economic and population prosperity would be such that you might not have been conceived to wish for it.
It's a little extreme to let a mobile phone's operating system call for the revamp of our economic systems.
Make the most that the owner of the proprietary OS allows you to. I am very thankful of all the people that have been writing free (as in freedom) software which allows us to have alternatives. I do not know about any small-collective agri-mercantile worker paradise, but I am so happy that I can still run Replicant and use things like Mutt+vim+gpg for email. Free software is now more important than ever.
Strictly speaking you are right, but Librem 5 [0] is going to get Respects Your Freedom certification from the Free Software Foundation, which is a high bar. If it's not enough for you, see also: Precursor [1].
That was my point, we are no better than in medieval times. One can however run things like Replicant (I do) and I am aware of some better alternatives like linux phone, pinephone and librem5. I want to learn more about them before my old Replicant phone dies.
Most people don't have the money to afford to own an entire factory, and if they did its still more secure for them to diversify by owning many pieces of many factories in different industries, that's why capitalists figured out how to commodify the means of production as stocks. Its not quite the same, its better.
It's not strictly better, no. As a minority shareholder in Google I have effectively no power to make them stop ruining the internet. Majority control is what gets you something like full ownership, just with some other risks and benefits.
Majority control requires a lot of wealth, you don't have majority control of Google because you don't have that much money. You have no reason to expect a person like yourself to be able to control the amount of capital assets that Google represents. Your access to the means of production is dependent on your ability to buy into them and stock allows you to do that in small increments. If it weren't for stock you still wouldn't have control over anything like Google.
I don't have control either way, that's all I'm saying.
Small quantity stock owners effectively serve to slightly reduce risk for big-fish investors. Their investments are like financial fodder. They get an upside of course, but I think the invention of 401ks are more of a help to the financial sector than their owners.
And, big fish stock owners help to reduce risk for small quantity stock owners. The big guys get to crowdsource capital for a big project and the small guys get to invest in a variety of big projects without needing to know much about the details of running any of the companies or risking their entire knot on one venture. The modern notion of stock also helps to reduce liability as it legally prevents the stockholders from being held liable for the actions of the company.
This whole discussion is about whether small fish in a mixed market economy have access to the means of production. They do, to a greater extent than ever before in history. Yes, if you only have $3k, you can't control a company that is worth a billion dollars. But you can invest in it, which option was not available before the joint stock company was invented (in the 7th century in Asia and the 13th century in Europe).
401k is also a boon to workers because it allows them to save for retirement by investing in the means of production at a tax advantage.
"who benefits more" is an interesting question but some of us shy away because it invites intersubjective utility comparison and we're not comfortable with the use of cardinal utility to make judgments of that nature.
Don't use apps. Aside from games and sensor integration they can rarely offer more than a web-based experience. Push for more safe hardware sensor integration in browsers.
Banks often have apps which are quite useful compared to their web-based counterparts. Of course, it doesn't need to be that way, but it's the way things work now.
AFAIK this does not work with apps which have purposefully disabled screenshots, the Android UI is visible on scrcpy but the contents of the app appear black.
What is interesting is that Android appears to be rendering every frame two times, because when I scroll down the notification drawer, which contains some semi-transparent elements under which you can see the restricted contents on the screen of the phone, but on scrcpy the transparent elements have black under them.
The same thing happened when I wanted to use my Android TV as a poor man's HDMI grabber.
I've tried it with the Tesco Clubcard app which has screenshots disabled. Also tried it out with some "Charles Schwab" app somebody else said they had problems in a reply here, scrcpy can record the screen perfectly.
EDIT: also tried recording a youtube video in firefox private mode, worked, but without the sound.
Any idea when it actually applies? Have you seen it in the wild? I don't recall having that message appear legitimately at any point but I guess it might be for corporate phones.
Any Android devs know if it's something that any arbitrary app can turn on?
The link here states, that the screenshot settings were apparently broken due to a bug. So no bad intent from Google here.
Besides that, apps can declare their content as sensitive and add the `FLAG_SECURE` to their activity which then hides the app content form "unsafe screens", the "recent apps" screen and screenshots. But this is a choice of the app developer instead of Google.
Not denying what you said, but I'd want a way to ignore "FLAG_SECURE" as a setting, so when I really want to take a screenshot, I should be able to do it regardless of what the app vendor wants to impose.
The upgrades being provided are for the purpose of maximising the value to you of what you paid for with your money (and nobody else's).
It is not like the company is making ongoing changes that benefit the company's business at your expense.
(This is satire.)
In some cases, life is easier when you decide "I do not have a choice". This allows complaining to be substituted for having to make hard choices and taking responsibility for the consequences.
Analog loophole. Worst case you could always carry a second phone and use it to do screenshots. Maybe we could make an app to calibrate and sharpen screenshots taken by a second phone to make them look as good as real digital screenshots.
We really need to show it to 'em who is boss. My phone ultimately should listen to me, not Google.
Does this require plugging phone into to a computer? When I want to screenshot a stock, I don't want to mess with all that on the go. If I'm going to need a computer, I'd just take the screenshot from there...
I guess my other choice is to carry two phones so I can take a photo of the screen...
Netflix(and I suspect anything displaying streaming media) is one for sure. The screen record only displays a black screen, but you can capture audio...
This year, sure. Next year's phones will probably refuse to photograph copyrighted design elements. But that's OK because you can always use a film camera and develop it yourself and hand-deliver a print.
I actually had to do that due to an app not having a feature to export a receipt and not allowing me to take a screenshot. Felt pretty brain-dead and dumb, if you ask me.
This does not end up solving the issue though. An android setting toggle to "Disable screenshot blocking policy globally" with a consent box saying "I understand the risks" would.
As the owner of the device my desire to take screenshots of anything I want should come first, regardless of what everybody else wants.
This is where a small bit of editorializing in the post title might be useful. The linked page is about a bug when you use .nomedia which is kind of interesting in it's own right. However most replies here seem to be on the broader topic of whether an OS should be able to block screenshots - this is another interesting topic but one that's only vaguely related to the linked page.
I'm curious if the /u/distalx posted this because they were interested in a discussion about the former or the latter.
If the former then it has largely strayed off topic. If the former then there might be a better page to link to that is more clearly about that specific "feature".
It is abused, just not widely. I have seen a few apps that use it. There should never be a situation where the user is not able to screenshot their own device.
I'm inclined to say that there is a small handful of cases where apps should actively prevent/modify screenshots:
* apps that show sensitive personal info (e.g. credit card numbers, SSN, etc.) should ideally self censor the sensitive info to help prevent accidental leaks
* corporate devices where the phone and all of the data within it belongs to the employer
I can agree with corporate policy, however I don't need my banking app or my web browser (private browsing mode) deciding whether I know how to handle a screenshot securely on my own device. You certainly won't find these restrictions on a Windows 10 machine running Chrome. Why should it be on mobile?
The real solution would be making the images directory not a free for all. There should be an OS filepicker which gets used to allow an app access to photos rather than the app having access directly. That way a screenshot is not instantly leakable.
It isn't a free for all already and that's not a "real solution" as there's a real need & use for some apps to have access to some/all images. Such as those that do automatic backup & syncing of them.
What's missing is just a user override of "no really screenshot this that wasn't an accident", that's about it.
When it comes to piracy of copyrighted music and movies, the analog hole is deemed to offer a significantly degraded signal and therefore DRM is still effective enough.
When it comes to screenshots, I think a native screenshot and a photo of a screen offer more similarities than differences and therefore it's not worth blocking one without blocking both.
I somewhat disagree! I think it’s fine when privacy is the feature. For example, Snapchat used to block screenshotting, but that was a feature both sides benefited from.
Fun 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.
I think Hanlon's razor applies. This sort of shoddy work was pretty common in early Android phones, as companies with little software experience adapted to being OS vendors.
> The kernel in Samsung Galaxy S2, Galaxy Note 2, MEIZU MX, and possibly other Android devices, when running an Exynos 4210 or 4412 processor, uses weak permissions (0666) for /dev/exynos-mem, which allows attackers to read or write arbitrary physical memory and gain privileges via a crafted application, as demonstrated by ExynosAbuse.
True in principle, while in the real world the devs didn't even inspect perms on those files or changed them deliberately to fix some access control issue without a second thought. Welcome to embedded software, where the product is ready when it passes the functional tests.
In related news, I have seen at least two proprietary drivers which allowed userspace libraries to program the hardware without any kernel oversight, incuding things like DMA engines. Pointed it out to one vendor; "yeah, we guess it's not ideal, but you know, details of the hardware is our secret sauce and customers demand no binaries in the kernel because reasons, blah blah".
I assume many of those embedded OpenGL implementations may work that way. Anyone with evidence to the contrary?
> "Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app or your organization."
To me that implies Android supports individual apps locking down your device so that you can't use certain features (like screenshots) while the app is open.
However, I'm not really sure that would work, since I don't think that would be able to bypass iOS prompting you to give that app access to your photo library.
There's a third-party "ScreenShieldKit" which claims to be able to do this:
So, apparently it's technically possible to block this, but AFAIK, Apple doesn't provide an equivalent to Android's FLAG_SECURE ("treat the content of the window as secure, preventing it from appearing in screenshots or from being viewed on non-secure displays").
DRM-protected video can't be recorded (or screenshotted) in iOS, but as another comment noted, that seems to be a video-specific thing.
Nah, the DRM on iPhones is much stronger than screenshot protection. When you’re watching DRM protected media you can still take screenshots but the part of the screen that has the content will be blacked out. Basically all forms of reading pixels from DRM windows just return nothing.
This is a feature: FLAG_SECURE is real and used by many apps. i.e. Chrome's Incognito mode.
Sure, you have workarounds for power-users, but Google is locking the Android ecosystem progressively for regular users. Just like the Manifest v3 for Chrome.
Maybe Google is doing the "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy that worked really well for Microsoft in the past.
The thread describes a bug indeed, but the feature really exists.
Quoting the Android SDK reference : "FLAG_SECURE [...] Treat the content of the window as secure, preventing it from appearing in screenshots" [1]
Try to screenshot while in Chrome's incognito, you'll see it in action.
> but Google is locking the Android ecosystem progressively for regular users.
FLAG_SECURE has existed for as long as Android has. It can't possibly be evidence of locking down the ecosystem progressively as it's always been part of the ecosystem.
Well, I don't assume malice, I can stay in a superposition. It could be malice, it could be incompetence, and it's important to be able to discern between the two, and that's purely contextual.
I had a similar problem when I updated to Android 10 and the MediaStore content provider decided to get stuck in an infinite loop trying to upgrade its database. I couldn't take screenshots, use the camera, or use any functionality in any apps that would rely on the photo gallery. Now, that's me, a long time Android app developer, and it took me an hour to figure out what the hell happened (wiping the data for said content provider fixed everything, obviously). Imagine what would a regular user do if they encountered this issue? I had a fully-stock installation too, didn't even unlock the bootloader.
I don't understand why modern software has to suck so much. If you can't perform some operation for some reason, for the love of god, at least show a sensible error message so people who haven't spent ridiculous amounts of time reading the source code of your product as part of their job can troubleshoot their systems. Not "something failed, go read logcat, maybe it helps, good luck".
> at least show a sensible error message so people who haven't spent ridiculous amounts of time reading the source code of your product as part of their job can troubleshoot their systems. Not "something failed, go read logcat, maybe it helps, good luck".
While I’m not sure whether it’s true, I think the reasoning behind this is that to the average user, a sensible error message is about as useful as "something failed, good luck".
An infinite loop as you described however is not really an error condition; in fact this is the premise of the Halting Problem [1] which is not solvable as far as we know. There's no way for the media provider to know if the loop will ever resolve and it may just be the case that you have an absolutely massive photo library that takes a lot of time to load. You could argue that they could add some sort of background timer that triggers an error if the provider takes too long to deliver data, but then what should that timeout be? What if the user's device is just naturally slow or the photo library is stored on some sort of external storage device (SD card maybe) with awful bandwidth? If your timeout is too low, it will prevent users from legitimately accessing their photo library; if it's too high, it ruins the point of having a timeout in the first place.
In this sort of scenario the better choice rather than implementing error detection is just fixing the original problem that caused an infinite loop so users don't need to fix anything in the first place. I think the reason why debugging/resolving issues seems so complicated in modern times is in part because we already did fix most/all the "easy" issues from the past generation -- the only remaining issues are extremely hard to catch or, in the case of the Halting Problem you experienced, mathematically impossible.
> In this sort of scenario the better choice rather than implementing error detection is just fixing the original problem that caused an infinite loop so users don't need to fix anything in the first place.
Sure, not having the bug would be better, but I can only assume that the developers didn't intend to make the conversion loop. They failed to not have the bug then, and most likely will fail to not have bugs in the future; that's life. The solution in this case may not be to detect an error condition, but to just indicate what the software is doing. Ex a persistent notification for 'updating database schema', maybe appearing after a 5 minute timeout; if that sits around for an hour or five days or something, you can google around for it.
The only way to do this typically is to either already be aware of the issue so you can add an error (And in that case you would have just fixed the issue)
It should be noted that there are legitimate reasons for blocking screenshots; on corporate managed devices handling sensitive data e.g. files or PDFs for example. Obviously if the device is owned by the company then the company is well within its rights to control what functionality is available (just as a solo user is within their rights to control what the device is doing at all times). This is a bug where the device is somehow being tricked into thinking this functionality has been disabled by its owner, when in reality it has not been.
There are also legitimate reasons for blocking the disabling of location services. If I have devices with proprietary applications or access to proprietary data sitting in a secured room, I want to make sure nobody can take that device out of the room, and if they do, the device should enter some sort of lockdown or sleep mode so as to prevent the leaking of sensitive information. This is a legitimate feature that would make sense to implement on commercial (not consumer) devices. That the OS ships with the ability to disable disabling location services is not an indictment on the OS - it is only an indictment if the OS does so without your permission.
> there are legitimate reasons for blocking screenshots
Couldn't someone anyways display the content on one screen and take a photograph with another device. For text content, the degradation of image quality doesn't even matter. Doesn't that make screenshot-blocking a pointless exercise?
Security is always a matter of making things harder for the bad guys. Couldn't someone just bomb your safe, fly a plane into your house, send an ICBM at your car?
Of course they could, but you reduce the probability that any random person can do that by taking precautions. Screen photographs also betray information that screenshots don't, for example nearby surroundings where the photo was taken, any reflections on the screen which may show who took it, metadata that can be used to conduct forensics to figure out which device took the picture, etc. In order to avoid giving yourself away, you'd actually have to plan a photographing mission, which may be made impossible by the circumstances (e.g. the device is held in a room with security cameras, nearby coworkers question why you're taking pictures of documents on your screen, your workplace may not allow secondary devices past the entrance, etc.)
Whereas with a screenshot you just hold two buttons and you now have an image that you can exfiltrate through a variety of ways into the hands of the bad guys.
My understanding is this is a little bit more nuanced.
For an app to use bluetooth, it needs location permissions as well as bluetooth permissions. Reportedly, this is to prevent an app from using bluetooth beacons to determime your location without permission.
Otoh, it sucks for bluetooth stem toys; you can't use them on an Amazon Fire tablet in a kid's profile, because location permissions are not allowed for kids' profiles.
Its slightly wrong. You can't allow an app to scan for bluetooth devices without giving it location permissions because bluetooth scanning can be used to detect precise location.
This works exactly the same way on iOS or any device that supports Bluetooth low energy, since it allows very fine grained location detection. Try it yourself.
This has caused some issues for covid apps since, to use BLE on Android, you need to request the location permission - which people were naturally afraid to do.
But if you disable location services, you cannot get your location at all. This is unlike more privacy-respecting platforms like Android, which let you get your location from the GPS sensor without enabling location services.
Suppose Apple occasionally sent "anonymized" screenshots back up to Apple as part of "screen services." You could say you could disable screen services by not turning on the display, and that is what disabling location services is like on Apple devices.
That sounds like a bug on Android's part. If you disable something called "location services", then you would expect that the GPS sensor no longer works.
Why would you expect that? If you deny an app the location permission, you would expect that the app cannot use GPS, and that is exactly what happens on Android. If you want faster location information in return for sharing "anonymized" location information with Google, you can optionally turn on location services to do so. This is considered a big enough privacy invasion that Android devices with Google services ask the user about it on initial set up.
On iOS, if you want to get your location at all via any app, even an app that keeps the locations it receives on the device, you automatically consent to having your location sent to Apple, and Apple doesn't even tell the user that they're doing this unless they go out of their way to find the privacy policy.
> But if you disable location services, you cannot get your location at all.
I think this is exactly what the average user would expect. In fact, users may not think location services have been disabled if apps are still able to show their location after the fact.
Do you happen to know if the location look-up (probably for nearby hotspots) is anonymized or not? I can imagine this would be an issue if your specific query can be tied to a specific device. Obviously this isn't an issue if you have Find my iPhone enabled since you consent to Apple having your location anyways.
> I think this is exactly what the average user would expect
Why would people expect that they can't get their location without telling Apple? On Google Android devices, there is a separate toggle to turn the ability to request your location on and off device-wide in the quick settings toggle that is separate from the ability to turn Google Location Services on and off, which you have to open the full device settings app to toggle after initial setup.
Anyone 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.
In older Androids it was too easy for the app to get the permission to capture/record the screen without clear user consent. In newer Androids you need to ask permission at runtime.
It's only a part of the issue. The other part is that a "launcher" app shows miniatures of apps when you scroll through open apps, and this behavior is controlled by the same screen capturing permission. When you enable screenshots, you also enable previews in the launcher app when switching between apps, in some cases it might be not desirable.
There's probably some more nuances that I'm not aware of.
It's to stop a preview from showing up in the recents screen. Try loading a page in incognito mode and then pressing the overview button. Notice that you just see a grey square instead of the page you loaded.
They should be but on android, it's bot handled by the same setting.
So as an app developer I can either set the `FLAG_SECURE` to hide both or I need to create own workarounds like navigating to the root view element and setting it to invisible whenever the app is paused just to hide it from the recent apps.
Personally I appreciate it, because for some odd reason my phone manufacturer placed the screenshot button combo in a weird location that I naturally grab when switching from vertical to horizontal, and so I'm always taking accidental screenshots. And if I'm doing something worth being in incognito for, I don't want any accidental screenshots, especially being backed up on Google photos.
Though it would probably be nice if it asked you to confirm with a thumbprint, thereby allowing you to bypass the security.
That is what is so nuts about this comment thread. People assume this is some illogical or nefarious decision by Google. Usually, these things are privacy related, or to prevent nefarious apps from capturing data without your permission.
Perhaps "Screen capture" should be in the permissions API instead of blocking it...
But for all the people complaining here, is there a legitimate app with this function that you use on a daily basis?
The feature isn’t literally supposed to prevent you from recording the screen, but it’s enough of an annoyance/deterrent that people don’t. The goal is to prevent people from having sensitive information sitting in their camera roll by accident and send a unambiguous signal to the user that you shouldn’t be screenshoting it.
It’s the same feature Gmail enterprise offers that “blocks downloading and forwarding.” Like of course literally it doesn’t and can’t possibly prevent someone motivated but it drastically reduces the chance of someone leaking confidential information when they have to go through a bunch of kludgy steps.
I can understand the rationale somewhat, but annoying since I often use it for testing during work and it makes it hard to screenshot bugs.
Another pet-peeve is banking apps doing the same. I understand they don't want stuff to show up in the app switcher and stuff, but it's annoying when I have to screenshot some expense or numbers to send to others.
Since when does Google allow you to watch porn?
They do everything to fight it. You can't even install legit porn apps without manually downloading the apk. And then it only works on your phone and tablet, not the TV where it would actually be desired to work.
Also what right does Google have to tell me what I can and can't watch on my TV/device?
Not hosting something on their store doesn't mean they're trying to fight it. You're free to install whatever app you want outside of their store. Or just use the browser like everybody else.
Porn is not allowed in the app store. They cannot regulate porn videos (child porn might slip through) and the headline next day would be ''Google allows child porn apps on the play store''
Huhh? I mean, I wouldn't trust any porn site with app permissions, but how does that logic even make sense? The inevitable conclusion would be that Chrome should be banned as well, since I'm sure there's some sketchy corner of the internet with that crap available.
Maybe I'm obtuse, but I don't really see the difference between downloading Firefox from the play store or downloading a porn app. In either case, I downloaded an app from Google's servers that allows me to view objectionable content.
If the objection is that Google doesn't want to provide an app that can be used to access illegal content, then why provide a browser? I would think that there is less of a chance of finding child porn on a major porn site app than what would be avaliable via a browser.
The only difference I can think of is that a browser has other functionality besides adult content.
> I don't really see the difference between downloading Firefox from the play store or downloading a porn app. In either case, I downloaded an app from Google's servers that allows me to view objectionable content.
Congratulations. You may see it like that, not many others will.
> The only difference I can think of is that a browser has other functionality besides adult content.
Yes. Same reason why the reddit app exists in the play store. There is some other content other than porn on reddit.
I would think rather the difference is that it allows the Play Store itself not to contain any apps that market themselves as being about porn. Sure, you can use them for that purpose, but someone searching the Play Store will not be able to get to a store page that is pornographic or explicitly intended for pornography.
The app isn't alerted. Rather apps can indicate they have sensitive information via FLAG_SECURE. This is useful in preventing things like your bank account information from persisting in the recents snapshots.
Why this blocks manual screenshots with no override though is bonkers insane. But likely a case of an incomplete feature than malice as it's not unreasonable to assume both entry points for screenshots hit the same internal path.
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
Lots. Automatic watermarks. Automatic resizing. Different storage options, putting a phone frame around the screenshot, and lots of other things that are really user workflows. And that is the heart of the issue: when we restrict user workflows, we reduce the utility of the tool.
Then make it a generic image editor. What we have now is: an editor but for screenshots, an editor but for selfies, an editor but for cat photos, each with its own cloud storage which leaks (or spills) data once a year and which data is also being processed by the app owners in ways you’d be disgusted about.
There’s a screenshot functionality in the OS and there’s a Share button which should work just as fine and be way more secure.
The shot->image-process->save->share cycle takes user time, and is an inconvenience that some people will even pay money to avoid. Since we're talking about screenshots, we're actually talking about typically, developers, tech writers and marketers who are automating their day-to-day workflow.
I think the person you are replying to is saying that the entire flow is a single action: you hit screen shot, and the screen shot is taken, edited, and shared to some configured entity, in one step. Seems pretty obvious to me why a single step that doesn’t remove you from app flow would be waaaayyy more useful than needing to use any other apps to complete the job.
Actually, other than being humorous, you just said, do it the way I want you to without any understanding of why a user may not want to do it that way.
But third party app can be more flexible. For example, I used a app that can let you easily crop a part of screen, then you can edit, image search, share, OCR than translate and many things just in a pop-up.
Writing tutorials is a common use for screenshots. Suppose I want to write an app that makes it easier to create tutorials. It could have companion software on my desktop computer so that when I hit the enter key, it captures a screenshot and transfers it to the computer. This would eliminate tedious steps and streamline the process.
It might seem like a niche application, but it seems there is tutorial creation software for other platforms already. It's probably pretty useful for people working in IT departments.
Consider for example an app that lets you set triggers based on different events, like a hardware button remapping app or an IFTTT-style service. Should the user be able to program such an app to take screenshots?
Anyone who uses one will probably be wondering why your preferred method of taking screenshots always works whereas theirs is sometimes blocked. The problem hasn't really been fixed for everyone that way.
It's a weird problem. Some application running on the device must accept some user event, such as a key press, mouse click or touch event and turn that in to a request for a screenshot. This is true regardless of operating system. I agree that it should always be possible for a physically present user to take a screenshot and save it, but how can the OS really know if its really the user initiating the action and not a malicious application?
Even if you can be sure that the event originated from a real user action, that doesn't tell you that the user did the action with the intention of taking a screenshot. For example, they could have been "clickjacked" into clicking the screenshot button.
It doesn’t need to spoof input, it just needs to be something the user wants to provide input for. That user input can then be trusted, and the malicious app can claim whatever it is doing was at the behest of its user, whether that is true or not.
This seems simple enough to solve. Display a modal when screenshoting apps marked as "secure", requiring user intervention. If it appears without your input, simply dismiss it and block the screenshot. This allows users to screenshot when they want to.
I'm a bit confused, reading through comments here, this seemed like some nefarious issue, reading the conversation thread in the op though it seems like an error with the .nomedia file in the folder that's fixed by either appending a second dot to the front of the file name or removing the file.
I'm still unclear whether this was some intentional issue or an error.
The fix seems easy enough, if a bit opaque and non-obvious.
That thread's also from September, does this issue still exist?
>Removing the ".nomedia" file from my snapshot folder solved the issue. Not sure whether I created the file or not, but apparently excluding it from the library breaks snapshots. Hope this helps!
Had to look it up, but the purpose of .nomedia is to tell apps not to scan that directory for content. It's basically a suggestion, but say you have a dir with a bunch of cached web assets; it would be useful to drop a .nomedia file in there. So really this seems like a bug in the screenshot tool for being too strict (it isn't supposed to prevent writing, only reading). Like the screenshot tool tries to create the dir when it already exists (but can't be seen), fails, and gives the wrong error message.
Having a Pixel 3 phone, I was annoyed that long-screenshots and call recording weren't available by default.
Even when I rooted the stock ROM and disabled automatic updates, I would find that occasionally one morning my root setup would fail SafetyNet (where it was working the night prior).
I addressed this by flashing the PixelDust rom on my phone.
It now has stable root and I control all updates.
As mentioned in many other comments, it's nice to own your device and not have it broken by automatic updates pushed from some external entity (intentional or not).
This seems to be in the same vein as "you can't be allowed to record your call audio," I suppose because you might theoretically use that capability to break the law.
So effing stupid. Every company/ vendor has automatic call recording but the prescience is that I as an individual am too much of a child to take legal liability for recording.. Infuriating. I pay for ring central just so I can record my calls. Even they want to give a warning prompt, had to customize the warning to be an empty message.
Alternatively on Android you can use Smali Patcher https://forum.xda-developers.com/apps/magisk/module-smali-pa... with a rooted Android. This program will generate a magisk module that will enable disabling the secure flag for the pesky apps disallowing screenshots. It will also allow you to enable mock locations. At your own risk.
I will especially hate this when I'm trying to translate something. If I can't copy and paste text into a translate app, the next step would be to take a screenshot and then use OCR. Of course if I'm really determined there are ways to still do a translation. I can only imagine what sort of problem is mighy arise for someone with accessibility issues.
Tangential, but after copying an URL in MS Teams, I can only paste it to another MS app. Pasting it anywhere gives a "your org doesnt allow this lol". I cant open links unless I installed Edge. How did MS get such powers in Android?
To everybody complaining about how there are no options, my phone my money, etc., go donate (money, code, documentation) to a project actively working on providing an alternative. Put your money where your mouth is. Actions speak louder than words.
I'm done with android. The final straw for me was when i needed to call 911 for my grandmother and android thought it was a good idea to play notification sounds in the middle of the conversation. Couldn't even hear the operator over all the loud DING DING DING.
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.
No. "Disappearing" messages are a farce. Disabling other people's screenshot capability so someone can be made to believe that their message will disappear is absurd. If you want a message that disappears, tell them in person and pat them down for a wire. Also there's nothing wrong with simply screenshotting licensed content. I'm allowed to do so for my own personal use. If someone is distributing licensed content that they are not licensed to do so, that's a matter for the courts.
In general paying content producers allows them to produce more content. If it's neutral for the (legitimate) end user, but positive for the creator, why would you not use it?
Because they want to access the content, which might not be available otherwise.
Netflix seems to be quite popular, and it's users don't seem to be bothered by the DRM - try taking a screenshot of it on the desktop, you'll get a black picture.
Like how they stopped showing movies on TV once VCRs entered the market, or stopped playing music on the radio once home taping killed it. If only we had had DRM on radios and TVs back then, perhaps there would still be some entertainment industry left.
Where is the user outrage over Netflix using DRM and blocking their rights to fair use.
And if you don't like it, don't subscribe. Are you against companies being able to choose if to use DRM or not? Do you want to ban DRM? What about encryption, do you want to ban that too?
I addressed your point directly. You claimed content might not be available otherwise (and that this is the reason consumers want DRM), I gave examples that showed that to be obviously false. And DRM is much more than just not banned - it's illegal to circumvent, thanks to DMCA.
> And if you don't like it, don't subscribe.
I don't. But you're still not happy - I guess you'd also like me to shut up about how bad DRM is for consumers, and allow you to spread your false claims how Netflix wouldn't exist without it, unchallenged?
> Are you against companies being able to choose if to use DRM or not? Do you want to ban DRM? What about encryption, do you want to ban that too?
So you agree that DRM is bad for consumers and society, you're just not sure how to fix it? Because that is the only reason you'd want to skip directly to arguing what should be done about it... unless you were hoping to make it seem like DRM is good by proposing some overreaching "solution", and make it look bad by association with an encryption ban. But that would be an incredibly dishonest and slimy way of arguing, so I'm sure that's not what you were going for!
For the record, no, I don't want to ban encryption. But if DRM continues to infringe upon people's rights (such as fair use, or even regular property rights, like when Amazon remotely deleted an e-book, or Sony disabled OtherOS on PS3, or HP disabled "unauthorized" ink with an update to already sold printers), a DRM ban could be warranted. Many types of contracts are already banned, but you think consumers should just bow their heads and take it while corporations lock away their rights behind DRM?
Do you believe the only choice consumers should have is whether to buy a product or not? They shouldn't advocate for consumer-protection legislation? They shouldn't even complain about anti-consumer practices, judging by how much my complaints bother you?
It's all about the attacker model. "Legitimate"encryption is for protecting all involved parties against 3rd parties. DRM is, in contrast, hostile against the owner of the device. Where is the hypocrisy?
Personally, though I don’t like DRM, I don’t think we can ban it generally (though I could probably think of a few more specific cases where we should). I would like breaking DRM to not be a felony, though.
Take another phone, aim at screen, take screen shot.
It's a stupid "feature" that lulls user's into a false sense of security.
The real motivation is to prevent badly behaved apps from taking screenshots in the background, but requiring the user shortcut input to do that would be more secure and a better option.
The real motivation is preventing badly behaved apps from taking screenshots in the background, without investing any engineering effort into adding the correct user warnings and settings to differentiate between intended and unintended screenshots.
When you buy a pixel, understand you are paying to participate in a beta program designed to further some Google employees careers. You're not buying a phone that is designed to serve your interests.
If you want a phone for daily use, get an iPhone or galaxy.
At 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).
One benefit of blocking sideloading is that it prevents people who have brief access to your phone (border agents, police, etc.) from installing spyware apps on the phone. On iOS those people can extract your data as local backup, but they won't be able to install any unapproved apps that run in the background and that monitor you. On Android it's trivial to install spyware apps via sideloading and regular users most likely aren't able to detect or uninstall them.
Right, and so on platforms where sideloading is allowed doesn't it make sense to restrict the ways in which apps might be able to see the screen contents of other apps, for the benefit of the user?
It's the same justification in both cases: ensuring the user's data stays private. I would prefer no screenshots over no sideloading if those are the only options.
Have you considered that even though you don't need it now, you could at any time in the future have some kind of disagreement with Apple about what kind of apps should be allowed on iOS (consider the Fortnite issue for example) and by that point, vendor lock-in would make it impractical to change platforms?
Sure it’s possible, although it appears to be unlikely. But in the worst case I can go without a phone. Fortnite was a great example of how the platform > any single app. I sided with Apple completely.
Because it deleverages Apple’s ability to negotiate for users against developers as a collective bargaining agent. You can jailbreak your iPhone or get an Android one if you want.
And blocking screenshots gives Google the ability to negotiate for users against developers who might otherwise not value the privacy of the user's screen contents... so what's the difference? You can get an iPhone if you want unrestricted screen access by apps.
> You can jailbreak your iPhone
And defeat all the security of the platform? No thanks. Plus, that relies on exploits being available (which I would hope for my own sake that they are not).
You don't see it as the same because you have different expectations/needs. I don't see Apple's control of the app store as being a value-add for me, so to me that is user-hostile. Meanwhile I do think it's important that apps can't arbitrarily look at my screen contents.
> I don't see Apple's control of the app store as being a value-add for me, so to me that is user-hostile.
Sure, I think the exact opposite is the case. Fortunately so far Apple has been on my side here. When that changes, I'll have to reevaluate the utility of the iPhone.
> Meanwhile I do think it's important that apps can't arbitrarily look at my screen contents
Hmm. Do you have any resources I could read to understand how iOS apps are able to arbitrarily read my screen contents? Thanks.
From all the people making up wild ass nonsensical shit with no relation to link? The link is a bug. Screenshots stop working if there's a .nomedia file in the screenshot directory, removing it fixes it. That file isn't normally there and it's unclear how it ended up there, but it's just a silly bug. There hasn't been any policy change. Nothing changed with screenshots. They behave the same way today that they did 5 years ago.
Now, I'm as frustrated as anybody else here that I'm forbidden to use whatever feature I want from MY phone, for which I paid, with MY MOENY (and nobody else's apart from mine). But then again, what choice do I have? Not buy a phone? Switch to what? There are no viable and practical alternatives. It's a "take it or leave it" situation.