The haphazard release of Microsoft Recall has led to some developers to implement their own countermeasures against screenshots.
Veracrypt has now included anti-screenshot functionality by default, meaning that any Veracrypt window will hide its contents in screenshots and screen recordings.
Third-party developers of security software have started to introduce anti-screenshot functionality into their apps. The latest to introduce such a feature are the developers of VeraCrypt, an open source encryption software.
VeraCrypt 1.26.24, released on May 30th, 2025, introduces several changes and improvements. One of them is the new protection against screenshots and screen recordings on Windows.
Any attempt to capture the VeryCrypt program window after installation of the update hides the program window on the desktop. I have tested this with several screen capturing options, including my favorite tool PicPick, the Snipping Tool, pressing the Print-key, and several more.
This is the new default behavior. Windows users who do not want this may turn it off again. I had to turn the feature off to screenshot the new option in the VeryCrypt settings. Most users may want to keep it turned on, as it may also protect against malware running on the system that is designed to take screenshots.
Do you think this will eventually become the new norm among third-party software? I think any good developer should at least consider doing this for their Windows versions at least.
I think it’ll be the norm and probably should’ve been the norm for a while. It’s pretty normal for certain apps on Android and iOS to block screenshots for privacy. I think Windows should maybe make an API specifically for privacy and not DRM that’s a bit more granular.
I don’t think so, I would be very surprised if mainstream web browsers do it. I hope software vendors would add a toggle for this but I really can’t hold my breath.
When I worked at a bank, we had special document viewers which included this. It was so that none of us could take screenshots of customer signatures and try to paste them onto new documents, so it was an internal control to protect customers from dishonest bank employees.
That was more than 10 years ago, so the ability itself is relatively old.
The funny thing is, you only needed to have the document viewer open on your desktop, even as a minimized window, and it would block all screenshots. Something like that would help to protect people in future, if there’s something they can just keep open in the background.
But I assume Microsoft will try to counter this. They will have some bullshit ‘warning’ message that Recall is being interfered with, so that the company IT team has to investigate. They will probably try to sell it to companies as ‘improving security’ by being able to see screenshots of what employees were doing.
I’m curious to see how banks will deal with this, and other companies which permanently have sensitive information on their screens all day every day. Probably law firms will have an issue with it too.
Good for Veracrypt, but I’m done with Windows. I’ve been using Windows since the days of 3.1 on floppies and I am done. MS is more untrustworthy than ever, especially this latest Recall nonsense. And the fact that the developer of my favorite firewall—Fort Firewall—is having such a huge issue getting a new EV Certificate is simply ridiculous (Not Compatible with HVCI (Core Isolation) · tnodir/fort · Discussion #108 · GitHub).
Before Win 10 EOL arrives I plan to switch my wife to Apple and myself to Linux.
