Ever since Snapchat popularized the concept of disappearing messages, app developers have needed a way to block and detect when someone takes a screenshot — after all, a message isn’t truly ephemeral if the other party can save a copy of it. Android apps have always been able to utilize the FLAG_SECURE layout parameter to outright disable screenshots in a particular window, but this isn’t always the best solution. For those times when it would be better to simply notify the user that a screenshot has been taken, Android 14 has a new API that apps can leverage. Now, the first such app has been spotted in the wild, giving us a glimpse at how the feature works.

Previously, apps were able to detect when a screenshot had been taken by listening for file changes while they were in the foreground, but this was less than ideal. With Android 14, as long as an app declares the DETECT_SCREEN_CAPTURE install-time permission, the system will tell it when someone takes a screenshot. To maintain transparency, Android will also inform the user when an app has detected a screenshot being captured by displaying a toast message at the bottom of the screen.

Android Police tipster Ibrahim spotted that toast message recently after taking a screenshot of German shopping app Otto, giving us our first look at the feature in action. Immediately after taking a screenshot — even while the screenshot overlay was still visible — Android informed him that “OTTO detected this screenshot.”

The new system is not without its faults, however. For one, the API will only notify an app when screenshots are captured using the hardware button combo, so root mods will still be able to bypass detection. Google’s documentation mentions that it will not detect screenshots taken via ADB, either. And it’s currently unclear if an app declaring the DETECT_SCREEN_CAPTURE permission will know if a screenshot of its thumbnail has been captured from the recent apps menu.

Nonetheless, this is a clear improvement from a security perspective, as apps no longer need to use hacky workarounds and instead have a more granular permission to rely on. The fact that the permission is granted at the time of installation is perhaps less ideal than a runtime permission prompt, but most of the workarounds apps used previously did not require declaring an extra permission at all, so this is progress.

Meanwhile, Android 14 seems poised to be the fastest-spreading version yet as Google continues its work to solve the platform’s fragmentation problems. Android 13 became the most widely-used version almost exactly one year after its release, and several major OEMs have already published their stable Android 14 updates for many phone models, including industry giants like Sony and Samsung.