A new app lets you know when AI smart glasses are in the room with you.
As anxiety grows over smart eyewear that can record people without their knowledge, the ZuckOff app works by logging nearby Bluetooth signals and flagging those it believes come from smart glasses. The app has limitations—still, it represents a clever bit of countersurveillance.
Made by Polish developer Paweł Szydłowski, ZuckOff recognizes the manufacturer signatures of Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, and Snap Spectacles with high certainty, but can also spot Bluetooth-enabled devices like HeyCyan, Apple Vision Pro, and VistaView at a lower confidence level. Szydłowski is actively seeking submissions for other models to test as well.
The app works best when smart glasses are out of their case, powered on, and paired with a device, according to the ZuckOff site. Once you open the app, its signal strength feature tells you the approximate distance of a Bluetooth signal, but not the direction. It’s essentially like a metal or radar detector for smart glasses, merely alerting you when a signal is nearby. It’s not a GPS.
The app can send lock-screen notifications, and the in-app user interface displays the brand, quantity, and detection confidence level (possible, likely, or strong) for any smart glasses in the room. ZuckOff is designed without accounts, analytics, or location tracking.
It’s not foolproof. There’s still a chance that smart glasses could be on and recording without the app detecting them, the site notes. Plus, simply recognizing a Meta or Snap signal nearby doesn’t guarantee a device is actively filming.
The app is part of a growing design trend in response to pervasive surveillance. Adversarial clothing design uses patterns meant to confuse AI surveillance cameras, while other creations are less serious. In August, the search engine DuckDuckGo started selling satirical “Normal F***ing Sunglasses”—$35 glasses made by Knockaround that don’t have any cameras or microphones. They might have been a joke, but Meta is reportedly working on a new generation of smart glasses without a camera, according to The Information, suggesting that consumer privacy concerns are driving real-world design decisions.
For people worried about the panopticon created by smart glasses, ZuckOff could be a new line of defense.