How to Take Screenshots of Instagram Stories Without Getting Caught
To the horror of screenshot lovers everywhere, Instagram is rolling out a new feature that alerts creators when someone decides to immortalize their temporary Instagram stories with a screenshot. (A feature like this already exists to alert users to snapshots taken on Snapchat.) There are a few workarounds you can try to avoid to alert people that you are taking snapshots of their stories in order to send them to friends and make fun of them, though if you want to be completely safe, but you should probably just stop taking screenshots ( or using Instagram ) altogether, instead of looking for ways to record temporary content. Why give someone the opportunity to call you creepers ?
According to Techcrunch , Instagram is testing a screenshot alert feature for public stories. Users taking screenshots of stories will be greeted with a pop-up in the app stating that the next time they take a screenshot of a user’s story, that user will be alerted with a round icon shown next to the person’s name in the Who saw ” stories.
This won’t be the first time users have been alerted to their subscribers’ tricks when they create screenshots. As mentioned above, Snapchat already has screen limiting warnings, while Instagram has a version of the feature that alerts users sending direct messages to Instagram Stories when their video or image has been covered by the recipient.
Whether or not a screencap justifies someone’s Instagram story is a personal opinion. Snapchat’s lock screen feature is causing controversy, with some users citing it as the reason they left the platform when Instagram debuted its Story feature. While I never took screenshots for Instagram Stories, I took screenshots on regular Instagram pages with funny images that I wanted to quickly share with my friends in other apps. If the Instagram user I have immortalized were alerted to my actions, I would probably cut down on the number of screenshots I create, but that seems like a rude way to discourage users from wanting to save the content they find on Instagram.
This feature is not available to every Instagram user (even after taking a minute’s screenshot this morning, I never got a warning), but if you are one of the affected parties, you can still ensure that your screensaver is uninterrupted by using a few simple tricks.
You have two options to avoid alerting users to your screen capture antics. First, if you are using your smartphone, you can switch your device to airplane mode, take a screenshot of the image in question (you will only see one or two stories before your offline device can no longer risk it), and turn off flight mode to continue viewing. If you’re on your computer or laptop instead, you can check out the Instagram webpage and just take a screenshot of the story from your browser window. Workarounds don’t necessarily make it harder to take a screenshot, but they add several additional layers of complexity to capturing an image without informing the creator. Whether or not you find this additional level of awareness is personal preference.