Agent Mobile screenshots

Thereza Van der · 3 weeks ago

Good afternoon all

I am creating a user manual for On-call scheduling. Part of the manual covers the Agent Mobile. I would like to take screenshots, but it is blocked. Is it blocked from ServiceNow's side? I logged an internal call but the problem could not be resolved so I was wondering if the block is from SNow's side?

The error I get is: "This app doesn't allow screenshots."

Regards

Thereza

Vikram Reddy · 3 weeks ago

Hi @Thereza Van der,

This is a ServiceNow-side security setting, not a hard platform limitation, so it's fixable, just not by you directly. The system property behind it is glide.ui.m.blur_ui_when_backgrounded, sitting in sys_properties on your instance. When it's set to true, it does two things: on iOS it blurs the app content when it goes to the background, and on Android it actively blocks screenshots and app-switcher previews. That exact wording, "This app doesn't allow screenshots," is Android's own OS-level toast, it fires whenever an app sets FLAG_SECURE on its window, and the Agent Mobile app sets that flag automatically when the property is enabled. So it's not a bug and it's not something Apple or Google is doing to you, it's your instance telling the app to lock itself down.

That's probably why your internal call didn't go anywhere, it likely landed with a device or MDM team who had nothing to check on their end. The fix lives in System Properties on the ServiceNow instance itself, so you'll need someone with admin access. Have them search sys_properties for glide.ui.m.blur_ui_when_backgrounded, flip it to false long enough for you to grab your screenshots for the manual, then flip it back to true. Don't push to leave it off permanently, it exists to stop sensitive field data (incident details, customer info, whatever's on screen) from ending up in a screenshot, a screen recording, or a cached app-switcher thumbnail, which most security teams treat as a real control worth keeping.

Two things worth flagging while you're in there. First, there's a companion property, glide.ui.m.clear_pasteboard_when_backgrounded, that wipes the clipboard when the app backgrounds, unrelated to screenshots but often toggled alongside it, so don't be surprised if copy-paste out of the app also behaves oddly while you're testing. Second, if you're on iOS rather than Android, you won't see this specific "doesn't allow screenshots" message at all, iOS doesn't expose a true screenshot-block API the way Android does, so the property just blurs the screen on backgrounding there instead. Worth confirming which platform you're actually testing on before your admin starts poking at properties, since the symptom you're describing is Android-specific behavior.

Thank you,
Vikram Karety
Octigo Solutions INC

View solution in original post

Vikram Reddy · 3 weeks ago

Hi @Thereza Van der,

This is a ServiceNow-side security setting, not a hard platform limitation, so it's fixable, just not by you directly. The system property behind it is glide.ui.m.blur_ui_when_backgrounded, sitting in sys_properties on your instance. When it's set to true, it does two things: on iOS it blurs the app content when it goes to the background, and on Android it actively blocks screenshots and app-switcher previews. That exact wording, "This app doesn't allow screenshots," is Android's own OS-level toast, it fires whenever an app sets FLAG_SECURE on its window, and the Agent Mobile app sets that flag automatically when the property is enabled. So it's not a bug and it's not something Apple or Google is doing to you, it's your instance telling the app to lock itself down.

That's probably why your internal call didn't go anywhere, it likely landed with a device or MDM team who had nothing to check on their end. The fix lives in System Properties on the ServiceNow instance itself, so you'll need someone with admin access. Have them search sys_properties for glide.ui.m.blur_ui_when_backgrounded, flip it to false long enough for you to grab your screenshots for the manual, then flip it back to true. Don't push to leave it off permanently, it exists to stop sensitive field data (incident details, customer info, whatever's on screen) from ending up in a screenshot, a screen recording, or a cached app-switcher thumbnail, which most security teams treat as a real control worth keeping.

Two things worth flagging while you're in there. First, there's a companion property, glide.ui.m.clear_pasteboard_when_backgrounded, that wipes the clipboard when the app backgrounds, unrelated to screenshots but often toggled alongside it, so don't be surprised if copy-paste out of the app also behaves oddly while you're testing. Second, if you're on iOS rather than Android, you won't see this specific "doesn't allow screenshots" message at all, iOS doesn't expose a true screenshot-block API the way Android does, so the property just blurs the screen on backgrounding there instead. Worth confirming which platform you're actually testing on before your admin starts poking at properties, since the symptom you're describing is Android-specific behavior.

Thank you,
Vikram Karety
Octigo Solutions INC

Thereza Van der · 2 weeks ago

Morning Vikram 🙂

Sorry for the late reply. I changed the value to false but still get the same error. Is there something else I need to do? It feels like I am so close to the solution but missing something.