WhatsApp added ephemeral photos -which can only be seen once- last year and without any kind of protection. You could take screenshots of them and it was even possible to open them again and again with the help of WhatsApp Web / Desktop. The bargain is over: WhatsApp no longer lets you take screenshots of these ephemeral photos.
Not only that, but they cannot be seen from WhatsApp Web either, being therefore quite well protected. They can only be opened on mobile, and on mobile we cannot take screenshots of them. There still being three ways to keep them forever: one of them very easy and the other two not so much.
Save ephemeral WhatsApp photos with root
if you have root, you can view the photos that can only be viewed once as many times as you want and without the other person knowing. This is so because WhatsApp saves these photos in the mobile storage, but in a folder that you do not have access to unless you use root access and a file manager that allows you to take advantage of it.
If you are rooted, you can use a file explorer like MiXplorer to navigate through the folders until you get into that one. where WhatsApp saves photos that can only be viewed once. The specific folder is data/data/com.whatsapp/files/ViewOnce
.
Inside this folder you will find JPG files with the latest images that can only be viewed once that you have sent or received, so it shouldn’t be hard for you to find the most recent one. You just need to make sure it’s downloaded (by opening the chat, for example), but you don’t need to open the photo in question.
Take screenshots with Xposed
Another way to do the same is to disable screenshot protection, for which you will need to have an app that allows you to load Xposed Framework modules. In practice, it is normal that you need root, have Magisk, a current alternative to Xposed such as LSposed and the Xposed module with which you can disable FLAG_SECUREAndroid’s protection against screenshots.
You may download the Xposed module from here and then you must activate it in the tab modules from LSPosed and enable it to work on WhatsApp. Then it is recommended that you restart the mobile to ensure the chances of success.
After doing it, you can take screenshots in the photo viewer that can only be seen once, without Android or WhatsApp getting in the way of your destiny. The other person will not be able to tell if you have taken a screenshot or not.
If not, you will always have the photo on your mobile
It is a shabby option, yes, but functional
we left for the end the less elegant option, but that it is universal and does not require you to have root or strange inventions: take a photo of the mobile screen. Yes, it’s not the same, and yes, the photo is likely to look a bit off, but at least it’s a very easy way to save for posterity a photo that can only be viewed once and is accessible to everyone. world (as long as you have another cell phone or camera handy).