Notification of or detecting screenshot before being taken?

God of Biscuits picture God of Biscuits · Jan 23, 2010 · Viewed 31.6k times · Source

Is there a notification or other mechanism of being informed that the user is taking a screenshot with the home/power buttons?

I've seen threads about wanting to disable the taking of screenshots, but that's not what I'm looking to do.

I have a photographer client who's concerned that his works will be copied by means of users taking screenshots and I thought that if there was an opportunity to put a watermark across the image before the screenshot was taken, that would allay his fears.

Answer

conorgriffin picture conorgriffin · Jan 27, 2010

Here's a way which might work, although it will totally go against user interface guidelines I'm sure. If you force the user to have their finger on the screen for the image to show then I don't think they can create screenshots. Because as soon as you press the home+lock keys to actually take the screenshot, the screen seems to behave as if there are no fingers touching it. Try taking a screenshot while moving between home screens to see what I mean.

Not a perfect solution by any means but you may be able to work it into your app design if you're really clever without it detracting too much from the user experience (a tough challenge though!). Nevertheless, I believe this may allow you to display artwork/photos without allowing users to take screenshots.