Screenshots and screen recording

What the app does

Chat in Wesprs is built to resist casual capture — and to be honest about what that can and cannot mean. On iOS, sensitive screens are hidden from the snapshot the system takes for the app switcher, and when the system tells us your screen is being recorded or mirrored, sensitive content is covered for as long as the capture is active. This is a privacy setting that ships switched on, and you control it.

A still screenshot is different: iOS does not let any app prevent or blank one. What we do instead is disclose it — when the system tells us a screenshot was taken in a chat, the other person sees a plain notice in the thread. Messages are end-to-end encrypted and expire server-side within 24 hours, so there is no archive to capture later — the conversation simply stops existing once its clock runs out.

What we cannot promise

We will not pretend to do the impossible. No app can prevent a screenshot on iOS, and no app can stop someone from pointing a second phone or a camera at their screen. Screenshot detection depends on operating-system behaviour we do not control on every device or version. Treat anything you send as something the other person could, in principle, capture.

The screenshot notice is a disclosure, not a shield: it tells you a capture happened, but it cannot undo it, and it cannot see an external camera. The honest position is: share with people you trust, and use the report and block tools the moment that trust is broken.

The calm-by-design point

Because nothing persists and there are no view-counts, streaks, or read-receipt pressure, there is far less to capture and far less reason to. The architecture removes the archive; your judgement covers the rest.