Image Protection

The plugin uses JavaScript to implement various techniques that prevent users from copying, saving, or taking screenshots of images on your site.

The plugin is designed to be lightweight and should not significantly impact your website’s performance. EXIF scanning only runs when you start it from Media > EXIF Privacy.

Go to Settings > Image Protection and choose a level:

• Relaxed: reacts only to confirmed screenshot shortcuts and to tab switching. Lowest chance of false positives.
• Balanced (recommended): adds pre-emptive shielding while screenshot modifier keys are held and blurs whenever the browser window loses focus (which happens when most screenshot tools open).
• Strict: the most aggressive heuristics, including blurring when focus is lost right after a modifier press and periodically clearing the clipboard. This catches the most attempts but can occasionally blur content during normal use.

On Windows and Linux, pressing PrintScreen copies the screen to the clipboard. When this option is enabled, the plugin overwrites the clipboard right after a PrintScreen press so the captured frame cannot be pasted. It is best-effort: it requires clipboard permissions and is not supported in every browser. With the Strict level, the clipboard is also cleared periodically while the tab is focused.

It can blur protected media during in-browser screen capture (the Screen Capture API used by browser tabs) when you enable “Block screen recording” in Settings. It cannot stop native operating-system or third-party screen recorders.

No. Mobile browsers do not expose any way to detect or block hardware-button screenshots or screen recording. On phones the plugin still applies deterrents: it blocks long-press “Save image”, dragging, and copying.

Yes, the Image Protection plugin is compatible with most WordPress themes. However, some themes may have custom scripts that could interfere.

It depends on the format. PNG and WebP files are read and cleaned by the plugin itself, so they need no extra PHP extensions and work on PHP 7.4 upwards. For JPEG and TIFF, scanning requires the PHP EXIF extension ( exif_read_data ), and removing the metadata also requires a PHP image library: ImageMagick ( imagick ) is recommended for selective privacy cleanup; GD can be used as a fallback but may remove all embedded metadata from JPEG files. These features are optional and disabled by default — the rest of the plugin works without them.

PNG and WebP cleanup is completely lossless. Only the metadata chunks are removed and the image data is copied byte-for-byte, so the picture cannot change. JPEG and TIFF cleanup has to re-encode the file, so a very high-zoom comparison may reveal tiny differences in pixel values. With ImageMagick the ICC colour profile is left untouched, so colours still look the same.

The eXIf chunk (camera EXIF including GPS), the tIME modification-time chunk, and privacy-bearing text chunks ( tEXt , zTXt , iTXt ) with the keywords Comment , Description , Author , Source , Software , Creation Time , and embedded XMP packets. Other text chunks, the ICC profile, palette, transparency, and pixel data are left untouched. Note that a PNG carrying an EXIF orientation tag loses that tag on cleanup; this is very rare, as PNG orientation is normally already baked into the pixels.

The EXIF and XMP chunks. The compressed image chunk ( VP8 or VP8L ), animation frames, alpha, and the ICC profile are left untouched.

Yes, you can disable protection for specific images in two ways:

1. 01Add the class no-image-protection to the image (or a parent wrapper such as <picture> ): html <img src="image.jpg" class="no-image-protection">
2. 02Add the data attribute data-image-protection="false" to the image or a parent wrapper: html <img src="image.jpg" data-image-protection="false">

Yes, you can force protection on specific images or elements in two ways:

1. 01Add the class force-image-protection to the image: html <img src="image.jpg" class="force-image-protection">
2. 02Add the data attribute data-image-protection="true" : html <img src="image.jpg" data-image-protection="true">

This will ensure the image or element is protected even if it would normally be excluded (like SVG images).

Yes. Go to Settings > Image Protection and enable “Apply blur protection to video elements”. This option is disabled by default so existing sites are unaffected after updating. You can also opt individual videos in or out using the same no-image-protection , force-image-protection , and data-image-protection attributes used for images.

Go to Settings > Image Protection to enable automatic privacy metadata removal on upload, or use Media > EXIF Privacy to scan your existing library and clean flagged images in batches. Test on a staging site first.

To uninstall, go to the Plugins page in your WordPress admin, find the Image Protection plugin, and click “Deactivate.” You can then delete it if desired.

Yes, when “Protect images” is enabled. Background images on elements, and on ::before and ::after (the usual Elementor container background), are blurred during a capture attempt. Text on top of the background stays sharp. The image address remains in the page CSS, so this is a deterrent, not a way to hide the file.