In February 2024, WhatsApp tested a new privacy feature in the beta version to help protect user profile photos from criminal acts.
Now this feature has been officially rolled out to the regular version of WhatsApp, namely the ability to prevent users from taking screenshots or screenshots of profile photos.
This will provide better security for users and greater control over who can access their content.
In beta testing, attempts to take a screenshot would give a black screen along with the words ‘unable to take screenshot due to app restrictions.
Now on the stable version of WhatsApp, users who want to make this effort will get the same message.
When TechViral tries to take a screenshot of the profile photo, WhatsApp does not display a black screen but still gives a pop-up saying ‘This application does not allow screenshots’
We also noted that while we couldn’t screenshot individual profile pictures, when we tried to take a profile picture in a group chat, WhatsApp still allowed it to be taken. However, to take profile photos of each member of the WhatsApp group, permission is not given.
While this feature was launched, there is no further detailed information such as whether this feature is optional or not so there is no way to disable it if users still allow other people to take screenshots of their profile picture.
This is not the first feature to help protect user privacy on WhatsApp, previously there were options such as changing profile photo privacy settings, one-view media, and status privacy settings.
However, this is a step forward in helping provide users with a more secure messaging app, and it’s likely that more users will start seeing this feature on their devices in the coming weeks.
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