All the Ways to Detect a Fake Screenshot
You don’t have to scroll very far through most social media feeds to find a screenshot of a text, comment, or post—maybe a funny post on Reddit, or a hilarious response to X, or an incriminating conversation on WhatsApp. But how do you know that a screenshot is genuine and not artificially created to mislead you?
First of all, it is important to keep in mind that fake screenshots can be made very easily. Web browsers have HTML editing capabilities, which means you can temporarily change the content of articles and online posts, and there are plenty of photo editors that will happily help you change the text on an image with just a few clicks.
There are even free tools that will create fake social media posts for you. As a result, it is often difficult to conclusively prove the authenticity of a screenshot, but there are clues you can find to help you make one decision or another.
Check the context
If you are dealing with a purported screenshot of a post or article that is in the public domain, your first question should be why the original content was screenshotted rather than linked directly to it. Even if people post screenshots for convenience, they should still link to the content they link to.
If there is no link back, try to find the original source yourself – find account X, a blog post, a Reddit thread, or something else. If there are no signs of this, this is another reason to be suspicious. Of course, messages can always be deleted ( the Wayback Machine can help here), but it’s still worth looking into.
Think also about what the screenshot does. Does it depict anything controversial, illegal, or likely to evoke emotion? Basically, is it possible that this was just for clicks? This is another warning sign. Getting a viral post is often worth the few minutes it takes to fake a screenshot, and many people try to do this.
Even if the context is harder to understand (for example, in a private text message thread), look at the main screenshot itself for clues. Who are these people? Have they made any official comment? Is there any backstory on how the screenshot was obtained? Is the screenshot from a trusted source (such as a trusted news organization)? All of this can improve (or detract from) the authenticity of the image.
Study the image
Screenshots are easy to fake, but they may be taken in a hurry and may contain inconsistencies. Examine the image for inconsistencies: poor alignment, broken or misplaced elements, or strange formatting. If the screenshot is from an app, try comparing it to the actual app on your phone or to a listing in the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Counterfeits often use the wrong style or an outdated interface.
To hide these inconsistencies, fake screenshots are often pixelated and of low quality – something else to watch out for. Authentic screenshots should be crisp and clear, and should not look blurry or overly processed: use caution unless the photo is of poor quality and resolution for some reason.
The usual rules for detecting fake images apply to fake screenshots: does everything apply? What is the source? Does this really make sense? Take this fake screenshot of a news story about child soldiers, which immediately shows blurry graphics and text. However, if you look closely at the image, the uniform looks like a play uniform – the children don’t look particularly upset or determined, and one of them is almost laughing.
Of course, the photo is taken from a game in a military camp and has nothing to do with real battles. Resources like PolitiFact and Snopes can help debunk your screenshots, as can other sleuths on social media and sites like Reddit (they may spot an image problem you wouldn’t otherwise see). When it comes to images, it’s often worth using TinEye reverse image search.
Use a photo editor
Sometimes the screenshot metadata will tell you more about it. You can check this on Windows by right-clicking the image and selecting Properties ; on macOS, right-click and select Get Info . Look for details such as the dates the image was created, last modified, and where it was last downloaded. Not all screenshots will have all this information attached, but it’s a good idea to check just in case.
Taking a questionable screenshot in your photo editor of choice can help you take a closer look at it and perhaps spot some mistakes its creator made in choosing the right fonts and graphics, aligning elements correctly with each other, and removing evidence of the forgery. You can usually also check image data in photo editors (in Photoshop it’s File > File Info ).
Forensically is a great free image analyzer that runs in your browser and can help you take a closer look at screenshots (and any other types of images). Not only does it allow you to zoom in on any part of the image, but it also has a number of tools for detecting changes, such as looking for mismatched brightness values or checking for areas of the image that may have been cloned.
As I mentioned above, proving that a screenshot is real or fake isn’t always possible since these images are so easy to create, but once you go through all these steps, you should be able to get a much better idea of whether what you’re looking for is see if it’s genuine or not.