Every time you share a screenshot, you’re sharing everything in it. That sounds obvious, but it’s easy to miss: an email address in a corner, a user’s name in a thread, an internal URL in the address bar, or account details that were never meant to leave your screen.
Redacting before you share isn’t just privacy best practice — it’s something your teammates, clients, and users will thank you for.
What to look for before sharing
Before you share any screenshot externally, check for:
- Real names or usernames of people who didn’t consent to being in the screenshot
- Email addresses — yours or anyone else’s
- Internal URLs or API keys visible in the address bar or app UI
- Payment information — card numbers, account balances, transaction IDs
- Passwords or auth tokens that might be visible in a settings screen
- Notification content — other people’s messages visible in the status bar
The status bar is one people often miss. If you have a message preview or email notification visible at the top of your screen when you take the screenshot, it’ll be in the image.
Redacting on iPhone
Most basic photo editors on iPhone don’t have a proper redaction tool — they have blur, which can sometimes be reversed. A solid black or colored rectangle over the sensitive area is the right approach.
In ScreenEdit, the redact tool lets you draw a box over any area you want to hide. The result is a clean, flat block — not a blurred smear that hints at what’s underneath.
Cropping vs. redacting
Sometimes the easiest redaction is just a tighter crop. If the sensitive information is at the edge of the screenshot, crop it out instead of drawing a box over it. The result looks cleaner and communicates the same thing.
Use redaction when the sensitive area is in the middle of something you need to show. Use crop when it’s at the periphery.
Redacting in bulk
If you’re sharing a set of screenshots — say, for a product demo or a support ticket — go through all of them before you export. It’s easier to catch everything in one pass than to export, review, and re-export.
ScreenEdit lets you work on multiple images in a single session, so you can redact across a set and export everything at once.
Redact in seconds, right on your iPhone.
ScreenEdit's redact tool draws a solid block over any sensitive area — clean, flat, and irreversible. No desktop required.
Download ScreenEdit — FreeFree to download · iPhone
The rule of thumb
If you wouldn’t say it out loud in the room where the screenshot is going, cover it before you share.