Does Instagram Tell People When You've Screenshotted Their Photo?

Admit it: we all want to know when someone's taken a screenshot of our Instagram photo. Whether it's your Instagram Story, your Instagram grid post or your Instagram DMs: if someone screenshots it, we want to know about it.

Can you see when someone has screenshotted your Instagram?

Currently, Instagram hasn't introduced a function for Stories or even for the grid posts, so you won't know when someone has saved your photos. But it's bad news for all those DMs you've got saved on your photo stream, because as of the end of 2018, Instagram users were able to find out when you've print screened their direct photos, and you're able to see when they do it to you.

According to The Tab, the update means that when you're sending and receiving photos via DM on Instagram, if the person you're sending it to decides to screenshot the picture and save it to their camera roll, the sender receives a notification saying the person has screenshotted their photo and now has it in hard copy. Much like Snapchat really.

Users will also be told when their messages have been 'delivered' and 'seen', and when photos have been 'opened', to make being ghosted all the more apparent. It's like being blue ticked on Whatsapp all over again. JOYS.

While this is certainly not as scary for social media stalkers as if someone got notifications when you screenshot their actual Instagram posts - or their STORIES - it's certainly a step in that direction. It's especially helpful for those of you (we see you) sending sneaking DMs you shouldn't be, because now you know if people save them.

Could we start getting notifications if someone screenshots our grid? Our photos? Our Instagram stories? On one hand it's probably quite nice to know when someone is taking a permanent record of one of your snaps, but on the other, we're not sure how to explain to the person we went to school with 10 years ago that we only grabbed her photo because we like her shoes.

Instagram users can also now unsend DMs, in case you're worried about certain messages getting screengrabbed. To unsend a message you've sent over Instagram:

1. Tap in the top-right corner of Feed
2. Select the conversation and go to the message you'd like to unsend
3. Tap and hold on the message, and then select Unsend

Maybe that's one way to protect yourself from the screenshot function.

In May 2021, Instagram introduced the ability to hide the amount of likes on your profile, announcing in a statement: "You can hide like counts on others’ posts by visiting the new Posts section in Settings. This control applies to all the posts in your feed."

The company added, "You can also choose to hide like counts before sharing a post. You can turn this setting on or off, even after it goes live. People want more flexibility, so we thought it would be important to give people the option. In the next few weeks you will see both of these controls come to Facebook."