This iPhone bug won’t let me save cropped screenshots – but I found a fix

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ZDNET’s key takeaways

Cropped iPhone screenshots are saved in full after editing.
It’s an iOS bug that can expose information I meant to hide.
I found one fix, but always check screenshots before sharing.

I started using the iOS 27 developer beta the moment it released, but then I hit an annoying bug: my Roku remote app kept freezing, forcing me to close and reopen it every time I wanted to use it. That was frustrating enough that I reverted to iOS 26.

Also: After a week with iOS 27, I’ve found 5 hidden features that make even older iPhones better

Unfortunately, while running iOS 26.5.2, I noticed an even more annoying bug: My cropped screenshots wouldn’t save.

Cropped iPhone screenshots won’t save

Normally, when I take a screenshot on my iPhone, I tap the crop button on the full-screen preview, drag the handles around the exact portion I want to keep, and hit Done. The cropped version then saves to Photos. But a few weeks ago, that stopped working.

I took a screenshot, cropped it from the preview, sent it to a friend, and only noticed afterward that the full image was shared. Not the crop. I opened Photos and found the original screenshot sitting there, uncropped, with everything I had specifically tried to remove still visible. It was especially irksome because I had cropped out sensitive information that my friend ended up seeing.

Also: 16 Apple Messages settings I change on every iPhone – and why

Not the end of the world, but enough to make me wonder what the heck had happened. Now, it’s occurring every time I try to crop.

I cannot save a cropped screenshot at all. Well, technically, I can open the Photos app, find the full screenshot in my library, tap Edit, crop it there, and then the edited version will finally save. But that’s tedious and not how I typically use my iPhone. Multiple times a day, I take a screenshot, crop it from the preview, and share it immediately. That’s the workflow I like and would prefer to have back.

Note: To see full-screen screenshot previews on iPhone, open Settings > General > Screen Capture > turn Full-Screen Previews on.

Why this iPhone bug is a privacy issue

This isn’t simply an aesthetic issue. When I crop a screenshot, it’s because I want to remove or hide information, whether that’s my address, a phone number, a message preview, a browser tab, a Slack notification, or some other detail that should not be shared.

If the iPhone appears to crop the screenshot but then silently saves and shares the full image, that’s not just a random bug. It’s a privacy issue, especially for someone like me who takes tons of screenshots and even uses them for published stories.

Also: I never use a new iPhone until I change these settings – why they’re such a big deal

I searched to see whether this was a known bug and found several iPhone users complaining about the same problem on Reddit, TikTok, and various other forums. The behavior’s consistent: Screenshots looked cropped in the preview interface, but the image saves as the original full screenshot. Strangely, many users claimed that the first iOS 27 developer beta introduced the bug.

Remember, I installed iOS 27 developer beta 1, but later went back to iOS 26, so it’s interesting that I’m also experiencing the issue.

The only fix I’ve found for now

Digging further, I found some users claiming that installing the second iOS 27 developer beta fixes the cropped screenshot problem. So I installed that beta and immediately tested it. Nope. That didn’t work for me. The crop still wouldn’t save correctly.

Also: How to clear your iPhone cache (and why it’s critical for faster performance)

Then, this morning, my iPhone prompted me to install the third iOS 27 developer beta, which was released earlier this week. I did, and I’m very happy to say that it finally fixed the problem. After the update, I took a screenshot, cropped it directly from the preview, saved it to Photos, and the cropped version actually saved. I tested it a few more times, and the result is consistent. Wonderful.

Even better, the Roku app is working correctly again.

Should you install iOS 27 beta 3?

So, for now, that is the only fix I’ve been able to confirm: installing iOS 27 developer beta 3.

Not everyone should rush to install developer beta software on their main iPhone. You should back up your iPhone before installing it, and know that early iOS betas can break apps, drain battery life, cause problems, and introduce new bugs while fixing old ones. That’s exactly what happened to me after I installed the first developer beta, and my Roku remote app started freezing.

Also: How to free up your iPhone storage almost immediately – 8 easy ways

Still, for anyone dealing with this screenshot crop bug and desperate to fix it, iOS 27 developer beta 3 appears to be the build to try — until Apple rolls out an official fix in a broader release. ZDNET has an entire guide on how to install the iOS 27 developer beta.

I’ve contacted Apple for a comment and will report back if I learn more.

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Bree Lambert

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Recent Reviews

Meta pulled facial recognition code from its smart glasses app one day after WIRED found it

TL;DR

Meta stripped NameTag facial recognition code from its AI app one day after WIRED exposed it on 50 million phones. Meta says no decision has been made.

Meta removed nearly all traces of an unreleased facial recognition system from its smart glasses companion app on Friday, one day after WIRED reported that the software had been quietly embedded in an app installed on more than 50 million phones. The feature, which Meta internally called NameTag, was designed to convert faces captured by the company’s Ray-Ban smart glasses into unique biometric signatures and compare them against a database stored on the user’s device. WIRED also found that faces the system failed to recognise were cropped, indexed, and stored locally for future processing.

Andy Stone, Meta’s vice president of communications, told WIRED on Monday that the feature is “purely exploratory,” adding that no final decision has been made on what to do with it. That characterisation sits uneasily with the evidence WIRED documented. The version of Meta AI published the day of WIRED’s Thursday report contained several code libraries explicitly named for face recognition, a process for running the NameTag recognition pipeline, and a “Person recognised” alert the app would have shown if someone were identified.

Friday’s release stripped all of it out, along with a folder where the app would have stored the cropped images and biometric signatures of unrecognised faces. Meta did not answer WIRED’s questions about why the code was removed or whether the changes were planned before the story was published. A few fragments remain in the latest version, including an internal debug menu label and a dormant link meant to open a recognised person’s profile, pointing to parts of the system that are no longer there.

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The gap between Meta’s public statements and the code WIRED found is the central tension. Before the Thursday report, Stone dismissed the findings by writing that the company could not answer questions about how the system would work because “the feature does not exist.” Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, called the reporting “incredibly misleading” and “absolutely dishonest.” Yet the code was functional enough to include three AI models, one to detect faces, another to crop them, and a third to encode them as biometric data, all embedded in the companion app for a product already at the centre of a mounting privacy crisis.

Meta declined to answer ten questions WIRED posed before publishing, including whether it had already created the database of face profiles NameTag uses, how long the app retains photographs and biometric data of unrecognised people, and whether that data would ever be sent back to Meta’s servers. The company also did not respond to questions about whether it was building NameTag for blind or low-vision users, or to criticism from privacy advocates who warned the system could let stalkers and abusers identify strangers in public.

NameTag first surfaced in February, when The New York Times, citing internal Meta documents, reported that the company was developing face recognition for its smart glasses and considering a launch as early as this year. One internal memo reportedly described releasing the feature during a “dynamic political environment” when privacy and civil liberties advocates would be distracted by other concerns. WIRED subsequently found that much of NameTag’s machinery had been built into the Meta AI app as early as January, months before any public acknowledgement, adding another layer to the company’s pattern of shipping first and disclosing later when it comes to its smart glasses.

Kade Crockford, director of the technology for liberty programme at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said the removal does not undo the original decision to ship the code and pointed to it as evidence that consumer privacy needs stronger legal protection than Congress has been willing to provide. The Massachusetts House of Representatives last week unanimously passed a consumer privacy bill that, if enacted as written, would impose strong enforcement provisions including a private right of action allowing aggrieved users to sue. “State lawmakers need to do their job and step up to protect consumer privacy,” Crockford said.

“Meta’s sneaky tactics in slipping the face-recognition code into its smart glasses show exactly why data privacy bills need the teeth of strong enforcement,” Crockford added. “Companies like Meta prioritise their bottom line, so lawmakers need to speak in the only language its C-suite understands.” Whether a code removal prompted by investigative reporting constitutes a victory or merely a tactical retreat depends on what Meta does next, and on whether the regulatory pressure building on both sides of the Atlantic produces enforceable consequences before the feature quietly returns under a different name.

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