Apple Pencil makes a yellow wash that looks professional on a 12.9-inch display. Recipients can still run the brightness trick that 9to5Mac demonstrated on iPhone Markup in 2018: open Photos, raise brightness, and translucent “covers” give the letters back. The large canvas makes the mistake feel finished. It does not make the overlay opaque.
This guide is iPad only: Top plus volume capture, Pencil corner swipe, Split View and Slide Over chrome, filled shapes in Markup, and Safari when you want a baked bar or blur. The iPhone sequence lives on how to blur a screenshot on iPhone. Cross-device stills: how to blur a screenshot.
How to take a screenshot on iPad
Apple's current iPad screenshot help: on an iPad without a Home button, press the Top button and either volume button at the same time, then quickly release. Hold too long and you get the power-off slider. Press and release together, short.
- Open the screen you actually want. Close Slide Over if a Messages sliver is sitting on the right edge.
- Press the Top button and either volume button at the same time, then release. You should see a white flash and a thumbnail in the lower-left corner.
- Or swipe Apple Pencil from a bottom corner toward the center. Apple documents that gesture on iPad models that support Pencil.
- Tap the thumbnail to Markup immediately, or ignore it and open Photos later. Apple's find path is Photos → Collections → Media Types → Screenshots. Do not tap a share path yet.
Home-button iPads use Top plus Home, per the same help page. AssistiveTouch can add Screenshot to the floating menu if the hardware keys are awkward in a case. Back Tap exists on some models under Settings → Accessibility → Touch. None of those paths redact anything. They only write a PNG into Photos, and iCloud Photos will sync the unredacted original if that switch is on. Local covering is not anonymity.
Does Markup on iPad hide text?
Highlighter, no, not reliably. Pen at full opacity can, if you actually cover every glyph. Shapes with a solid fill are easier to verify. People fail this on iPad because the Pencil feels precise, so they paint a pretty translucent rectangle and call it done. Pretty is not the test. Zoom until the text is gone.
The incident piece with the original reporting is highlighter doesn't hide text. This page owns the iPad buttons, Pencil gestures, and the bigger canvas. Do not treat a hover preview as the saved file. Pencil hover can make a wash look solid until you lift the tip.
Open larger image in a new tabRedact on iPad with a filled shape
- Open the screenshot in Photos, or tap the thumbnail after capture.
- Tap Markup. Tap the plus, then a square or rectangle. Set fill to solid black. Line color black too, so you do not leave a halo.
- Stretch until the text is gone, including descenders on g and y, and a little padding around the box. Pinch until no letter peeks at any zoom level.
- Tap Done, then save a copy. Do not tap a share path that says original.
Duplicate in Photos first if you still need the unredacted image for yourself. iPad users share from Split View and grab the wrong tile. Naming the copy redacted.png in Files reduces that. Markup on a large canvas also tempts you to draw a thin frame around the secret instead of covering it. Frames highlight. They do not hide.
How to blur a screenshot on iPad in BlurThis
Prefer Black bar for grades next to names, phones, emails, and OTPs. Pencil highlighter washes are not a cover.
Built-in on this iPad
Photos Markup: filled black shape at full opacity, Done → save a copy. Skip the highlighter. Verify at pinch-zoom, not only Pencil hover preview.
Markup still will not give you a Gaussian you should trust for an OTP. For blur, pixelate, or several regions, finish in Safari as below.
In BlurThis
Use Split View if you like: Photos or Files on one side, Safari on the other open to the screenshot blur tool. Stage Manager users can float the same tab.
- Drop the screenshot onto the canvas, or tap Choose image and pick it from Recents.
- Drag a box with a finger (Pencil is optional). Use Black bar for numbers and emails. Use Blur or Pixelate for a face. Face covers are not identity-proof.
- Tap Download PNG. Share that file from Files. Do not screenshot Safari to export.
Editing stays in the Safari tab. The file is not sent to BlurThis servers for processing. Closing the tab drops the working copy from the page; that is not a wipe of Photos or iCloud.
What extra chrome does iPad add?
Multitasking means two apps in one PNG. Mail on the left, the bug on the right. Slide Over can leave a sliver of Messages. The floating keyboard can reprint a password. The status bar can show a personal hotspot name. Crop at capture time when you can. Bar what you cannot crop.
Sidecar and Universal Control users sometimes capture a Mac window on the iPad or the reverse. Check which device's chrome you included. A Mac menu bar on an “iPad screenshot” is a tell that you grabbed more than the dialog. Stage Manager piles windows. A Folio trackpad click can leave a pointer in the shot. None of that belongs in a PNG you paste into a public ticket.
Picture in Picture is the other iPad specialty leak. A FaceTime tile or a lecture video sitting in the corner will ride along with the Classroom error you meant to send to IT. Pause and close the pip before you press Top plus a volume button. If you already captured it, bar the tile, including the name under the face. Folio suggestion strips can reprint the last password you typed; cover that strip if it already landed in the first screenshot.
Classroom, Notes, and Freeform
Students screenshot other people's answers, then post the PNG in a group chat for the homework. Cover names. Cover emails in Classroom comments. Teachers screenshot a roster to ask IT about a login error: cover the roster, keep the error. A large iPad canvas makes it easy to include five extra rows you did not look at.
Notes markup on a screenshot pasted into a note can be a layer sitting on an embedded image. Export a flattened image if you share outside the note. Freeform boards are worse: stickies, arrows, and photos sit as objects. Exporting the board as a PDF can leave selectable text under your pretty cover. Screenshot the region you need, then bar it in Markup or the browser, then share that PNG. School iPads on Shared iPad add another leak: the passcode lock screen or the previous student's widget stack if you captured too early.
If the assignment itself is why you are covering classmates, student assignment notes go into roster rows and LMS comments in more detail.
PNG habits and when Markup will not save
Open larger image in a new tabThe floating thumbnail disappears after a few seconds. That is normal. Open Photos → Collections → Media Types → Screenshots. If Markup's Done button is grey, you may be in a Shared Album that does not allow edits. Duplicate to Recents first. Screenshots are usually PNG already. Keep them that way. Re-saving through a share sheet that converts to JPEG is how bars grow halos. Once pixels are replaced in a flattened PNG, later JPEG compression cannot reconstruct the original characters.
Phone numbers, emails, grades next to a legal name, anything short: use a filled bar. Verify at 100% zoom with Pencil or pinch. Covering a screenshot is not HIPAA or GDPR compliance.
Related device guides
Sibling walkthroughs: iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, Chromebook. Shared stills method: how to blur a screenshot.
