If Android mobiles have been characterized by something over the years, it is by offering the user complete freedom of customization and the ability to do practically anything, sometimes natively and other times through applications.
It is rare to find some kind of restriction in Google’s operating system, and when we come across one, it is almost always due to security or privacy issues.
This occurs with those apps that protect what is appearing on the screen so that we cannot take a screenshot of it, something that sometimes makes no sense, since we are not talking about apps where any type of transcendent or sensitive information is being given to the user.
For this reason, it may be the case that it is very necessary to take that image capture, something that a priori would not be possible, but we are going to explain how to do it. you can circumvent these restrictions.
Why are screenshots restricted?
As we told you before, it is normal for developers to restrict screenshots for privacy or security reasons, although there are applications in which this concept is not entirely correct and this possibility is cut off without much sense.
Most of the banking and payment applications block captures screen for security reasons, something normal and perfectly understandable.
Chrome blocks screenshots in its tabs and incognito windows for privacy reasons, which is also entirely understandable, since it doesn’t make much sense to be in the most private part of this browser and be able to take screenshots on your mobile.
In any case, we are going to be indifferent to why the developers decided to restrict screenshots of a certain application, since there are several methods that will allow us to carry out this action.
Today we are going to show you two different methods, an easy one that works in some cases and a more advanced one that should always work.
First method: Google Assistant
The way to block the screenshots of many applications is by disabling the capture button combination of our phone.
How can you imagine, if instead of this method, you use another auxiliary than pressing the keys of your smartphone, then you could capture without problems.
The Google Assistant is an application built into the vast majority of Android phones that allows you to capture the screen. We tell you how you have to do it.
- we open the application that we want to capture.
- We activate the google assistantwell saying Hey Google! or holding down the start key depending, something that will depend on how we have it configured.
- At that time we can write or use the voice to say Take a screenshot.
- The Google Assistant will now take a screenshot.
We are not going to deceive you, this method has little chance of success as most of the apps that are serious about blocking screenshots and thus have already predicted this method.
It may be that there is no choice but to opt for the second option to capture the screen.
Second method: using scrcpy
scrcpy is a screen mirroring program that allows us to see and control the screen of our Android phone on the computer.
The idea is that the moment we see the smartphone screen on the PC, we take a screenshot with the computer as we normally do. Pressing the Print key pants, for example.
scrcpy is available on Windows, macOS, and Linux, although the first thing to do is install Scoop, a command-line installer for Windows, on your computer.
- we open Windows PowerShell writing that same thing in the start menu and as soon as it appears on the screen select Administrator Mode.
- Inside PowerShell, we write the code below: iwr -useb get.scoop.sh | iex
- iwr is short for Invoke Web Request in English. This command starts a session to access something on the Internet. This command line will download and install Scoop.
- We push Get in and PowerShell will install Scoop.
Once we’ve done this, we need to download scrcpy to continue.
When we have it, the steps to follow are these:
- we open the Symbol of the systemsearching cmd in the Start menu.
- At this moment we execute the following command: scoop install scrcpy
Now that we have scrcpy installed, the next step would be to prepare our phone.
We must enable USB debugging on our Android device. If we do not have it, we must go to the settings from the terminal, enter phone information and press several times in succession on the build number until it tells us that we already have the developer options.
Once this is done, we can continue installing scrcpy.
- Let’s go to the settings of the telephone.
- We scroll down and look for developer options. If it does not appear, it may be inside the System normally.
- We hit the switch next to USB debugging to activate it.
- We connect the phone to computer usb.
- we open the Symbol of the system.
- Write the command scrcpy and we press Enter .
- A window will open and we will be able to see the phone’s screen, which will mean that we will be able to capture its screen.
The truth is that there are a few steps, especially this second method, but they are worth it if we need to capture what the smartphone screen is showing.
The screenshots on the mobile phone are guaranteed, even if they are restricted by the application as you have just read, something that can be of great help.