How to blur a screenshot on your phone

You want to post a screenshot, but it has an account number, a home address, a client's name or someone's face in it. Here is how to blur or pixelate those parts properly on iPhone and Android — and how to be sure the hidden text is actually gone from the file you send, rather than just hidden under something.

The short version

1. Open the screenshot and tap Share.
2. Choose ScreenCandy. It opens with the screenshot already composed.
3. Open Markup and pick the redact tool.
4. Set its style to Blur or Pixel, then drag a rectangle over each private region.
5. Export. The redaction is flattened into the exported pixels.

The whole thing happens on the phone. ScreenCandy has no backend, no account and no upload, so the screenshot you are trying to keep private never travels anywhere to be edited.

On iPhone

iOS Markup, the editor built into Photos, cannot blur. It can draw over things, and it can put a filled shape on top — which is a different thing, and the next section explains why that matters. To blur or pixelate on an iPhone you need an app that does it.

1. Take the screenshot, then tap the Share icon — from the screenshot preview in the corner, from Photos, or from the Files app.
2. Scroll the app row and tap ScreenCandy. If it is not there, tap More → Edit and add it to your favourites once.
3. Tap Markup to open the CandyMark tools, then choose redact.
4. Choose Pixel or Blur, and set the intensity. Pixelate reads as deliberate; a soft blur can be mistaken for a rendering glitch.
5. Drag a rectangle over each thing that should not be public. Use one rectangle per region rather than one big one, so the rest of the screenshot stays readable.
6. Pinch to zoom into the preview and check the edges — a half-covered digit is still a leaked digit.
7. Tap Share and export as PNG, JPEG or WebP. Arriving at the Share screen also saves the image to Photos.

On Android

Android's built-in screenshot editor varies by manufacturer, and where a blur exists at all it is usually a light smudge applied with a finger. The flow in ScreenCandy is the same on both platforms.

1. Take the screenshot and tap Share on the preview, or open it in your gallery and share from there.
2. Pick ScreenCandy from the share targets. Share an image to it once and it stays in the list from then on.
3. Open Markup, choose redact, and set the style to Pixel or Blur.
4. Drag over each private region, then zoom in on the preview to check coverage.
5. Export as PNG, JPEG or WebP at 1x, 2x or a custom scale.

Why a box drawn over text is not a redaction

This is the part that catches people out. In most photo and markup editors, drawing a black rectangle over a phone number adds a layer. The original pixels are still underneath it. Whether they can be recovered depends entirely on what happens next:

• If the editor saves its edit history — and many do, so you can reopen and adjust the file later — the layer can be moved or deleted and the text underneath read straight off.
• If you share the project file rather than an exported image, you have handed over the original with a sticker on it.
• If the editor only flattens on export, the exported image is safe but the saved project is not.

There is a well-known version of this failure with cropping: on some devices, a cropped screenshot has historically kept the cropped-away part of the file, so the full image could be restored from the "cropped" one. The general lesson is the same. What protects you is not the black box on screen. It is whether the bytes underneath it survive into the file you send.

Why flattening matters

A redaction is safe when the covered pixels are destroyed in the output — flattened into the image, with nothing beneath to recover. In ScreenCandy the preview and the export render from the same Skia scene, so the export is pixel-exact against what you checked, and the redaction is flattened into the exported file. There is no separate "export renderer" that might interpret the scene differently, and no layer left in the PNG for anyone to peel off.

Markup in ScreenCandy is non-destructive in your project — you can move a blur, change its intensity, or undo it, with unlimited undo and redo — and destructive in the export, which is the combination you want. You keep the ability to fix a redaction that missed by two pixels; the person you send the image to gets flat pixels.

A practical habit: after you export, open the exported file itself and zoom in, rather than trusting the editor's canvas. That one check catches the overwhelming majority of accidental leaks.

Why on-device matters for a bank or DM screenshot

The screenshots people most want to redact are the ones they least want to upload: a bank balance, a payslip, a medical result, a DM thread, a customer's dashboard. Most free "blur a screenshot" tools are web apps, which means the unredacted image is uploaded to someone's server first and the redaction is applied there. You are trusting a stranger's retention policy with exactly the image you were trying to protect.

ScreenCandy does the work on your phone. There is no backend, no account, no login and no analytics, and no copy of your screenshot is sent anywhere. The image only moves when you deliberately share the finished export, through the OS share sheet, to an app you chose. Details are in the privacy page.

Common questions

Can iOS Photos blur part of a screenshot?

No. The Markup editor in Photos has a pen, a highlighter, shapes and text, but no blur or pixelate tool. You can cover something with a filled shape, which is a layer on top rather than a redaction of the pixels underneath.

Is blur or pixelate safer?

Use a firm pixelate over anything that is text. A gentle blur on small text can sometimes be reversed well enough to guess characters, and a light blur also reads as an accident rather than a decision. Pixelate at a high intensity leaves nothing to reconstruct and is obvious to the reader.

Does the person I send it to see the original?

Not from a flattened export. The exported PNG, JPEG or WebP contains the redacted pixels and nothing underneath them. What you should never send is an editable project file when you meant to send an image.

Can I redact more than one thing?

Yes — add a redaction per region. Eleven CandyMark tools share the same canvas, so you can blur an account number, spotlight the part you actually want people to look at, and drop a numbered counter next to it, in one pass.

Does it cost anything?

No. ScreenCandy is free to use, and free exports carry a small wordmark. Pro removes it, including retroactively on re-export of work you made before upgrading.