Screenshots are deceptively personal. A single capture can contain credentials, customer data, private conversations, or internal tooling, and the decisions about where that image lives are easy to make by accident. This guide separates what stays on your machine from what gets uploaded, and what each hosting choice implies.
What local capture stores
When you take a screenshot and only copy it or save it locally:
- The image file is written to disk (Desktop for macOS built-ins;
~/Pictures/Shotivo/by default in Shotivo). - Nothing is transmitted. No cloud sync, no analytics payload containing the image, no account involved.
- The clipboard holds the pixels until you paste or overwrite them. Worth remembering on shared or kiosk machines.
This is the baseline: a purely local screenshot workflow has a network footprint of zero.
What sharing uploads
The moment you choose to share, the image must go somewhere so another person can reach it. A minimal sharing service stores only what’s needed to serve the link:
| Data | Why it’s needed |
|---|---|
| The image bytes | To display and let the recipient download |
| File size and dimensions | To render the page correctly |
| Creation and expiration timestamps | For retention enforcement |
| An anonymous installation ID | A random identifier for rate limiting, not tied to a name or account |
What a privacy-respecting service does not store: your name, email, device details, or any account information. Shotivo’s documented behavior matches this minimal list; no accounts exist in the system at all.
Unlisted links are not private links
This distinction matters more than most people realize:
- Private: only authorized people can access; there is an access control mechanism (login, permission).
- Unlisted: no access control, but the URL is hard to guess and the resource isn’t indexed or discoverable.
Screenshot sharing services are almost always unlisted, not private. The ID is a long random string (Shotivo uses base58 IDs), which makes enumeration impractical, and search engines aren’t pointed at share URLs. But anyone who holds the exact URL can view the image. Treat a shared link like something you’d write on a postcard: it reaches the person you intend, and possibly others if forwarded.
Consequence: never share a screenshot containing secrets via an unlisted link. Blur first.
Auto-expiration as a privacy feature
Permanent hosting means everything you ever shared remains accessible forever, including screenshots taken before you were careful. Expiration inverts this:
- Free tier (Shotivo): shares delete automatically after 7 days.
- Pro: links can remain live for up to 90 days; 90 days is the default.
For the dominant use cases, like bug reports, support requests, and quick design feedback, the information is worth having for days, not years. Automatic deletion means the data stops existing when the context does, with no manual cleanup and no “forgot I uploaded this” residue.
If you need a screenshot to persist longer than the free window, download the original before it expires; the share page exposes the full-resolution file directly.
Advertising on public web pages
Advertising is disabled, and no ads are served anywhere on this site today. If it is ever enabled for guide articles, Google AdSense will load only after a Google-certified consent management platform (CMP) returns the required IAB TCF consent signal: where consent for that purpose is required, ad requests stay blocked until you grant it.
- Shared screenshot contents are never supplied to or used for ad targeting. Image bytes are stored to serve the link; they are not scanned, classified, or analysed for advertising.
- Google ad settings are managed through Google Ads Settings and aboutads.info.
The Mac app and share-link service do not load this guide-page advertising code, now or if it is enabled later.
A practical privacy checklist
Before you share any screenshot:
- Scan for secrets. Passwords, tokens, API keys, session cookies visible in browser dev tools, internal hostnames.
- Blur what must stay private. Do it before upload, in the annotation editor, not after. Which method to use depends on how much of the value has to survive.
- Crop to the minimum necessary context. Less of your screen in the frame means less sensitive surface area.
- Match retention to need. Free links expire after 7 days; Pro links can last up to 90 days (90 days by default). Download the original if the recipient needs a local copy.
- Know where the link will live. Pasting a share URL into a public issue tracker makes it effectively public regardless of the ID’s randomness.
What Shotivo specifically never does
- Analyze screenshot contents for advertising or training.
- Use images for ad targeting or model training.
- Require or create accounts.
- Collect clipboard contents or URLs from other apps.
- Show ads inside the Mac app, on share pages, or around locally stored screenshots.
The privacy model reduces to one sentence: your pixels leave your Mac only when you explicitly press Share, and they stop existing when their expiration date arrives.