Every photo and video in pouchie is capture-blocked by default. You can’t turn it off, and we think that’s the right call, for the reasons below.
A circle is only as private as the least careful person in it
You can pick exactly who sees a photo. But the moment one of those people takes a screenshot, the photo is loose: it can be saved, forwarded, posted, backed up to another cloud, and seen by people you never chose.
That’s how private photos usually leak. Rarely a break-in: a save, a forward, then another. So closing the easy exit does more for privacy than a longer permissions list. (It’s one piece of a bigger picture: what sharenting is, and why it matters.)
What capture-blocking does
The protection uses what the phone itself provides:
- On Android, the photo screen is flagged as secure, so the system won’t let anyone screenshot or record it. What comes out is blank.
- On iPhone, a screenshot or screen recording of a photo shows an error in place of the image, the same way “view once” images work in other apps. The photo never makes it into the capture.
It’s on for every photo and every video, with no setting to weaken it.
What it does not do
It has limits, and here they are:
- It can’t stop someone pointing a second phone at the screen. Nothing can.
- It’s not encryption. It’s there to stop the one-tap leak, the most common way a photo gets shared when you never meant it to be.
The goal is simple: close the easiest exit, make every other one harder, and don’t promise more than that.
Why it’s a default, not an option
Most people keep whatever a setting starts as. If capture-blocking were a toggle, most people would never find it, and the people most likely to need it, sharing a child’s photos, would be the least likely to turn it on.
So it ships on, for every photo and video and everyone in the circle. The circle you chose stays the only one that sees it. Here’s how to set that circle up for grandparents.
