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Bluesky uses iOS secure text field API to swap UI elements on screenshots
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Illustration only Photo by Tyler on Unsplash
Bluesky's iOS app renders the Follow button inside a UITextField with isSecureTextEntry enabled, so iOS blanks it during screenshots and reveals a Bluesky logo positioned behind it.
This repurposes an iOS privacy API intended for masking sensitive input to instead watermark screenshots with branding. The technique is well-established and used by Telegram and Signal for legitimate privacy purposes, but applying it for branding drew mostly negative reactions in the discussion thread before it was locked.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
The implementation lives in a file called GrowthHack.tsx and depends on the expo-privacy-sensitive package, both by mozzius.
iOS blanks the layer of a UITextField with isSecureTextEntry during screenshots, exposing the logo hidden behind the Follow button.
The swap fails during app-switching gestures because iOS captures an inert snapshot at the start of the gesture without triggering the blanking behavior.
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