This iPhone bug won't let me save cropped screenshots - but I found a fix

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I started using the iOS 27 developer beta the moment it released, but then I hit an annoying bug: my Roku remote app kept freezing, forcing me to close and reopen it every time I wanted to use it. That was frustrating enough that I reverted to iOS 26.

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Unfortunately, while running iOS 26.5.2 , I noticed an even more annoying bug: My cropped screenshots wouldn't save.

Normally, when I take a screenshot on my iPhone, I tap the crop button on the full-screen preview , drag the handles around the exact portion I want to keep, and hit Done. The cropped version then saves to Photos. But a few weeks ago, that stopped working.

I took a screenshot, cropped it from the preview, sent it to a friend, and only noticed afterward that the full image was shared. Not the crop. I opened Photos and found the original screenshot sitting there, uncropped, with everything I had specifically tried to remove still visible. It was especially irksome because I had cropped out sensitive information that my friend ended up seeing.

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Not the end of the world, but enough to make me wonder what the heck had happened. Now, it's occurring every time I try to crop.

I cannot save a cropped screenshot at all. Well, technically, I can open the Photos app, find the full screenshot in my library, tap Edit, crop it there, and then the edited version will finally save. But that's tedious and not how I typically use my iPhone. Multiple times a day, I take a screenshot, crop it from the preview, and share it immediately. That's the workflow I like and would prefer to have back.

Note: To see full-screen screenshot previews on iPhone, open Settings > General > Screen Capture > turn Full-Screen Previews on.

This isn't simply an aesthetic issue. When I crop a screenshot, it's because I want to remove or hide information, whether that's my address, a phone number, a message preview, a browser tab, a Slack notification, or some other detail that should not be shared.

If the iPhone appears to crop the screenshot but then silently saves and shares the full image, that's not just a random bug. It's a privacy issue, especially for someone like me who takes tons of screenshots and even uses them for published stories.

Also: I never use a new iPhone until I change these settings - why they're such a big deal