Can People See When You Screenshot on Instagram? (Story and DMs)
We've all been there before – wanting to share something from someone's story or your own DMs. But we get nervous. In this article, we're answering the question to save us from the embarrassment: can people see when you screenshot on Instagram?
We’ve all been there before. Updating our close friends about who’s getting married from our hometown, who’s living their hot girl summer, who just slid into our DMs…
This isn’t new.
Sharing information on social media can be risky at times. Not only for truthful reasons, but also making sure that your own information and content you want to stay private stays private. I’m here to help you know for sure if people get notified when you screenshot their Instagram Story or DMs.
Jump to section:
- Does Instagram notify when you screenshot a story
- Can someone see if you take an Instagram DM screenshot
- What to do with your Instagram screenshot
Does Instagram notify when you screenshot a story
No. Instagram does not notify the person who posted the story if someone takes a screenshot of it.
Taking a screenshot of someone's Instagram story is the perfect opportunity to share their post– whether it's a PSA or an update on their work hours. A lot of the times, people post other Instagram posts on their story to share useful information that will benefit others.
Sometimes, you don't have the option to repost that person's post on your story. This might be because that account is private and you can't see it yourself, or they have sharing disabled for either their followers or for everyone.
If you take a screenshot of someone's Instagram story, I recommend first holding onto your screen to make the username and message bar disappear before taking a screenshot. This makes the graphic look cleaner. But, if you want to give credit to both the original poster and the person who's story you're viewing, you can choose not to make the username disappear.
Can someone see if you take an Instagram DM screenshot
It depends. People can’t see if you take a screenshot of your direct messages, nor can they see if you take a screenshot of photos and videos that were uploaded from their camera roll.
But, if you screenshot a photo or video that was uploaded directly from the Instagram camera, then the other person will see you screenshot it.
Let’s take a look at an example:
On the left, you’ll see person A took a screenshot of person B’s photo that was uploaded from their camera roll. Screen B could see that screen A saw the photo by the grey message, “Seen just now.” However, they can’t see that person A took a screenshot of the chat.
This is the same with text: no one can see if you take a screenshot of your Instagram DMs chat.
But, people CAN see if you take a screenshot of a picture or video they took directly from Instagram’s direct messages. If you send someone something through the blue camera icon in your DMs, you'll be able to see whether or not they took a screenshot of that content.
The reason why the other person can see when you take a screenshot of a picture or video that was uploaded directly from the app is because it can be seen as a privacy breach.
The pictures and videos taken in your Instagram DMs are meant to be “fleeting images,” with the option of changing its viewing settings: allow replay, view once, and keep in chat.
What to do with your Instagram screenshot
Let's say you found a very interesting and compelling Instagram story or video you want to create content out of yourself. If you want to do more than just share that screenshot from Instagram, I'd recommend using an image or video editor to edit your screenshot the way you want it to be. Or, maybe you're only using the screenshot as a reference for your own Instagram infographics.
Here, you'll see I uploaded a screenshot I took of my friend's Instagram story to Kapwing, an online image and video editor.
With this screenshot, I loved the tiger and wanted to add this to my own surreal collage. So, I used the automatic erase background tool to automatically remove the background. If you don't want the tool to automatically erase your background, you can manually do it by using the Erase or Magic Wand tool to get more precise and any spots the tool wasn't able to detect.
Once I erased the background, the canvas became transparent. I can now export this image and make it the prominent subject in my other project within Kapwing.
Here's the final product:
I chose all of the pictures in this surreal collage within the Kapwing editor, since they have a huge copyright-free library of images, videos, and sounds. That definitely made the process much easier for me. You can also download Instagram videos with Kapwing, if you want to edit a video or download it directly to your device.
I hope this helped you know that no one will see if you take a screenshot of their Instagram story, but they will see if you take a screenshot of a picture or video they sent you through your Instagram DMs.
It's safe to say, you can dodge the embarrassing "Why did you screenshot my story?" question. Just be careful in your Instagram DMs!
