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Yes but the joke is moot, because on the web, you can't really make text non-selectable (you can try, but it can be defeated extremely easily).

In an app, undoing that is pretty much impossible (or at least, above my pay grade).

This is one of a million reasons why apps are so bad.



> In an app, undoing that is pretty much impossible (or at least, above my pay grade).

In my experience it is above the average user's pay grade to work around it in a browser too. Even power users will probably give up if the usual ways don't work out (holding alt, browser extension, reader mode). The power-est of users might glimpse at the inspector, but they'll give up if the nodes are obfuscated.

All this to say that with things like Circle To Search or Apple's built-in screenshot OCR nowadays websites and apps are finally on a level playing field when it comes to anyone being able to circumvent text protection.


It was pretty easy to get a Bookmarklet from Google and add it to my iPhone Safari and use it.

on Mac/iOS you can just take a screenshot and then select out of the image.


Google pixel devices have had this for years. It's one of the few things that keeps me glued to this platform.

Just push the button to go to the task switch view and as long as the window preview thumbnail isn't blanked out, I can just get the phone to OCR any part of the screen in real time.


whoa, didn't know I could do that! thanks for the tip.


iPhone has had this for years.


Yeah, and I think it was there for longer than on Pixels.


Yup, I've used this for years. See also: not being able to select certain text without clicking a link (say, in a search result).


Alt+click avoids that in Firefox at least. Blew my mind when I learned about that, and I use it way more often than expected.


"Apps" of this sort are absolutely "on the web", and generally use browser engines to display the content. The real distinction IMO is between using a locked-down mobile interface vs. a full browser on a computer with an OS and UI intended to let you have that control.


I can pretty much guarantee that an app like Bumble is not a webview wrapper.


You can never know nowadays. But yeah, it must be a native app, at least on iOS with its PWA-hostile policies.


You can know. There is always telltale jank in web apps. And there are things that are basically impossible to do in web apps, like reliable camera integration.

But unlike Hinge, Bumble is usable on desktop (where getting the text would be a lot easier).




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