this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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Privacy

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Your iPhone model can be found or narrowed down from a simple screenshot (lemmy.ml)
submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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When you send a screenshot (even if height/width only is cropped) , the screenshot's width and height can be used to find the iPhone model of someone or narrowed down.

The most unique sized iPhone on the market right now is the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, as no other phone has the same width and height. So if you send a screenshot people will 100% know your exact phone. The regular iPhone 16 is common with the rest of the other phones and not unique.

If you send a screenshot from a iPhone XR, people can know if you using an iPhone 11 or iPhone XR since they have the same dimension which narrows down alot of options. (828x1792)

You can use this site here to view a list of all the dimensions. Click the iPhone's tab and sort the physical width or height.

If you don't want to expose your phone model, crop both width and height of each screenshot randomly. I would suggest cropping out the top of the phone as it shows your time if you care about that. Some sites like X have random inaccurate dimensions in uploaded screenshots, which is different from the original raw screenshot.

I haven't really checked with android phones, but it's probably the same thing.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It doesn't know your device model but it knows you're using an iPhone, but yes it can use the width of the viewport size to narrow down just like a screenshot but It does not matter as much if you have a more common sized iPhone rather than having a iPhone 16 Pro Max which is completely unique. Most likely there are other alternative browsers that spoof the viewport size for iOS, like letter boxing in Firefox.

I just talked about screenshots as they are shared all the time and some people might not want other people to know what type of phone they are currently using, just general privacy.

For iOS devices, the model is not included in the metadata of a screenshot

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I didn’t know they fixed metadata on screenshots, good looking out!

I distinctly remember a time when most phones would pass their model in the headers. That may have passed though!

I gotta ask: where would you put “awareness of screenshot size uniqueness” on a continuum from insane schizo shit to reasonable private person?

I guess if there was a security flaw in your device then a screenshot could tell an attacker that you have the flawed device but there’s other, more subtle, ways a person could do that which don’t require that they acquire a screenshot somehow.

And I guess there is some platonic ideal of a private person who wants to share a screenshot, a literal pixel perfect copy of what’s on the screen on their device, but would also like to conceal the specific model from the person they’re sending the contents of their screen to.

It just seems like the kind of information cognizance of which would be useful in a vanishingly small number of scenarios.