In our testing, attempting to take a screenshot of a View Once on an iPhone will result in an image with a page that says “Screenshot Blocked” instead of the image displayed. On the other hand, doing the same thing on an Android device will result in the app preventing the phone from taking a screenshot entirely. WhatsApp warns that if the person on the other end is using an older version of the app, they could still take a screenshot of your View Once media. However, this is apparently a temporary loophole as the blocking feature is still being tested, with the company promising that nobody will be able to take screenshots of the temporary images in the future.
Interestingly, you won’t get a notification if somebody attempts to take a screenshot unlike what happens on Snapchat. Of course, the Meta-owned platform warns that people could still use a second device to take a picture of the View Once media on their screen, so you should still only send pictures only to people you trust. Screenshot blocking for WhatsApp was first teased by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg way back in August but no clear timeline was given for its launch. It’s unclear if the new privacy feature is rolling out to all users worldwide or if it’s still only available to a select few, but it has worked with every account we’ve tried so far.
