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No, iOS 11 probably won't have a 'screenshot alert' feature

There's a rumour circulating on Twitter that iOS 11, the upcoming update to Apple's software for iPhones and iPads, will include a feature that sends a notification when someone takes a screenshot of your text messages.

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People are, understandably, freaking out about this:

But it's almost certainly not true. We dug into the social media outrage and found the source of the rumour: A vlogger named Jay Way who claimed in December to have told Apple about his idea for screenshot alerts.

There's no evidence that Apple is actually going to implement Way's idea. And it would be a huge change for Apple to add something like this. Certain apps such as Snapchat do currently send notifications if you screenshot messages, but it's unlikely that Apple would build that into its own Messages app.

This isn't the first time that a rumour of an app adding screenshot notifications went viral on Twitter. In November people began claiming on Twitter that Instagram had started sending notifications if people screenshot photos.

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That wasn't true. Instead, Instagram had introduced a feature where it sent a notification if someone screenshotted an expiring photo message sent directly to them. But the notification was vague, and people got confused.

Apple declined to comment on this story.

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