The whole point of the Snapchat app is to send photos to friends or family which you might not want anyone else to see, and one of the ways the app prevents a user from grabbing a screenshot of whatever’s on screen is to have the user place their finger on the display. As long as the finger is there, the photo can be viewed, and any attempts to grab a screenshot will close the photo. It’s a pretty clever way to prevent “illegal” screen captures, but it looks like iOS 7 will soon be making that feature moot. According to additional digging around the iOS 7 beta, it has been discovered that “Active touches are no longer canceled when the user takes a screenshot,” essentially rendering the security and privacy feature of Snapchat and other similar apps useless.
It will also no longer send notifications to Snapchat users to notify when a screenshot has been captured, meaning that iOS 7 users can go ahead and capture all the screenshots they want, and the other party will have no idea. We’re not sure why Apple has implemented this feature into iOS 7, but for apps like Snapchat, it looks like the developers will need to come up with a more creative way to keep photos private. Any Snapchat users out there bummed by this news?