An independent developer, moved after reading about the abuse of smart glasses to film people without their consent, decided to create an app to detect nearby smart glasses.
Smart glasses are wearable devices built into ordinary-looking eyewear that add functions like audio, cameras, sensors, and sometimes a small display. They can let you listen to music, take calls, capture photos or video from your point of view, or see simple information overlaid in your field of vision, depending on the model. To do this, they pack components such as microphones, touch controls, motion sensors, and sometimes a camera and tiny projector into the frame and arms of the glasses.
Nearby Glasses is an Android hobbyist app that continuously scans for Bluetooth Low Energy “advertising frames”—a type of data—to recognize devices from manufacturers linked to smart glasses, specifically Meta, Luxottica (Meta Ray-Bans), and Snap.
When it sees a matching Bluetooth signature, it sends a notification like “Smart Glasses are probably nearby,” though the developer explicitly warns about false positives, for example from Meta Quest VR headsets. Users install it from Google Play or GitHub, enable foreground scanning, start the scan, and then decide how to respond if an alert appears.
Because stalkers and harassers misuse smart glasses to target people, the developer built the app in deliberate defiance to modern surveillance after reading reports about people using Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses to secretly film others in massage parlors and during immigration raids.
In speaking with the outlet 404 Media about the project, developer Yves Jeanrenaud said: “I consider it to be a tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech.”
This kind of app matters most in contexts where covert recording or automated identification has real consequences:
- For people in vulnerable or stigmatized workplaces (e.g., massage parlors, clinics, shelters) where non-consensual filming can lead to harassment, doxxing, or professional harm.
- During law-enforcement or immigration actions, protests, or political gatherings, where smart glasses could be used for evidentiary recording, intimidation, or bulk identification.
- In any setting where bystanders reasonably expect not to be recorded or profiled, either because of a sense of privacy or because of the law (public transport, bathrooms, gyms, support groups).
In these scenarios it makes sense to want an extra signal that someone nearby may be using surveillance-capable wearables.
As observed by the reporters at 404 Media, this app is an imperfect, tech-based mitigation to a social and legal problem: it can misfire, it can’t tell you who is being recorded, and it risks giving a false sense of safety. The developer frames it not as a solution but as a small, user-controlled countermeasure in an environment where surveillance devices are becoming more invisible and more AI-augmented.
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