A new wave of free and low-cost mobile apps is emerging to help people detect when they are near smart glasses, such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses or Snap’s Spectacles, amid growing concern over hidden recording. One prominent example is Zuckoff, an Apple iOS app developed by Pawel Szydlowski, which sweeps local Bluetooth frequencies to identify vendor IDs and hardware signatures linked to these devices. The app, which has drawn 2,000 sign-ups since its launch in early August, also has a premium tier that runs continuous background checks for a $10 yearly fee. Szydlowski said he was inspired to build the tool after seeing social media videos of people using smart glasses to record pranks or harass women without the subjects’ knowledge or consent.
These detector apps, including similar tools like Antizuck Smart Glasses Scanner and Nearby Glasses, can indicate how close a device is, but they cannot confirm whether someone is actively recording or using artificial intelligence features. Szydlowski noted that glasses are most detectable when powering on, pairing, or leaving their charging case, and that once paired to a phone, they can become quiet, making silence an unreliable assurance of privacy. He also said the technology behind the detectors is the same Bluetooth detection used for other proximity projects, just applied to a new target.
The privacy issue is compounded by hardware modifications that disable the indicator lights on smart glasses, making them harder to spot. Tech journalist Joanna Stern demonstrated this in a video where a hacker removed the LED from her Ray-Ban Meta glasses for $100, enabling secret recording. On the other side, the detection tools are part of a broader technical battle between those who want more stealth and those who want more awareness.
Uttara Ananthakrishnan, an assistant professor of information systems at Carnegie Mellon University, said smart glasses shift the burden of privacy onto the person being photographed, unlike smartphones where recording is easier to spot. She added that social norms around such wearables are still forming, and that the risk of capturing children on video complicates consent further. Without clear mechanisms for balancing innovation and consent, she said, public spaces may become zones of surveillance anxiety.
Some manufacturers are responding by designing glasses without cameras altogether. Even Realities G2 smart glasses, released in late 2025, have no front-facing camera and instead function as a personal assistant displaying information to the wearer. CEO Will Wang said the company decided from the start that cameras were unnecessary for usefulness, and that removing them forced a focus on what truly helps users daily rather than adding sensors for their own sake.
Wang acknowledged that the rise of detector apps signals a social acceptance problem for the industry. As smart glasses become cheaper and more companies enter the market, demand for detection tools may grow unless wearable makers change their devices to avoid detection. Szydlowski said he hopes his app becomes obsolete, comparing it to how AirTag detection was eventually built into iOS and Android operating systems, and suggested that consumer pressure could lead manufacturers and governments to make smart glasses inherently easier to detect.
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