Screenshot timestamping: date your capture files

How screenshot timestamping works, step by step

Posts get deleted, listings change and messages are edited. A screenshot keeps a copy, but on its own it carries only the dates your device or cloud account gives it, and those are easy to question. A TimeBind adds a date recorded outside your own systems.

1. Capture the screen. Use your device’s own screenshot tool and keep the file it saves.
2. Note the context. Write down the URL or app, the account name, and the date and time you captured it, in a short text file.
3. Group the set. One TimeBind holds up to 10 files. For more, zip the screenshots and your notes together, and keep that exact zip.
4. Create the TimeBind soon after. Each file is hashed in your browser and only the fingerprint is recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain. The sooner you do it, the smaller the gap between capture and the recorded time.
5. Store the certificate with the originals, and don’t edit, convert or re-save those files.

Make screenshots more useful: full-page captures, URLs, originals, zip sets

• Capture the whole thing. Use a full-page capture or several overlapping screenshots, so nobody can say the important part was cropped out of context.
• Show where it came from. Include the address bar, the account name and any visible date in the shot. Save the page itself as a PDF or HTML file too, if you can.
• Keep originals. Screenshot files carry dates and metadata, but these can be changed and are weak on their own. Check what a file contains with the free file date and metadata inspector.
• Zip sets together. A dated zip of the captures, the saved page and your notes keeps the whole record in one fingerprint.
• Don’t forward, crop or compress first. Messaging apps and social platforms often re-compress images, which creates a different file.

For evidence of your own photos and videos, rather than captures of other people’s content, see proof of ownership of photos and videos.

Other options: Wayback Machine, cloud history, a witness statement

A timestamp works best alongside other records, because each covers a different gap.

• The Wayback Machine. For a public web page, the Internet Archive’s Save Page Now makes a capture held by an independent organisation. It can’t capture pages behind a login, private messages or apps. See is the Wayback Machine proof a page existed?
• Cloud version history. Photo and file services keep their own dates, but those records are held by the provider and tied to your account. See cloud version history as proof.
• A witness statement. A written account from you, or from someone who watched you take the screenshots, of what you did and when. Formal processes may need a particular form, such as a statutory declaration in Australia; a lawyer can tell you what is needed.

If the other side says your evidence is fake, read what to do when they say your evidence is a deepfake. To check a timestamped file later, see blockchain file verification.

Which plan suits screenshot evidence

A Pooled TimeBind uses 1 Token and an ASAP TimeBind uses 3, and each holds up to 10 files. The Free plan includes 1 Token every month, which covers one Pooled set of captures. Essential is USD $20 a month for 5 Tokens and Expert is USD $50 a month for 15. Use ASAP for captures you expect to rely on, because it can be checked independently from the certificate and the Bitcoin blockchain. See pricing.