Apple iOS 12 fixes random screenshots on iPhone X

Getty/Carl Court

• Apple’s new iOS 12 software fixes the most annoying thing about the iPhone X — the fact that its design encourages you to take random screenshots of the lock screen.
• If the phone is locked and the screen is off, the iPhone X will no longer take a screenshot. Your camera roll will be spared all the random captures you make when you’re just trying to unlock the phone. 
• I’ve been using iOS 12 for months and this fix works great. 
• You can get iOS 12 now as a free download.

Generally speaking, I like — not love — my iPhone X. But it didn’t take long after I got it before I ran into a niggling, annoying problem: Something about the way I held the phone to unlock it meant that I repeatedly and accidentally pushed the side buttons in the exact right way to take random screenshots.

Well, if you had that problem, too, the good news is that Apple’s newest iOS 12 operating system, available now as a free download, mostly fixes the random screenshot problem on the iPhone X (and, presumably, the brand-new iPhone XS, which shares an identical design).

The magic, Mashable reported back when the iOS 12 beta launched earlier this year, is that you can’t trigger a screenshot while the phone is locked and the display is asleep. In other words, it’s impossible to take a screenshot of your lock screen when you’re not actually using the phone. 

I’ve been using iOS 12 since the beta came out, and I’m pleased to report that it works as intended. My number of unintentional screenshots has gone down dramatically, and so too has my frustration with the device. 

Now, the features in an iOS beta don’t always make it to the finished product — the whole point of a beta is to see what works and tweak accordingly. However, in this case, Apple was clearly pleased with the results, because the random screenshotting fix is in the final iOS 12 release. 

In general, I personally have been really pleased with iOS 12. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it brings all kinds of handy and thoughtful tweaks, like this screenshotting fix. My other favorite new feature is the new way it handles notifications.

Apple iOS 12 is available now for the iPhone 5S and up, the iPad Mini 2 and up, and the iPod Touch 6th generation.