Someone quietly filming your gym workout through their trendy eyewear? The Nearby Glasses app turns your Android phone into a smart glasses detector. Dating apps used to be the biggest privacy concern at coffee shops. Now you’re wondering if those stylish Ray-Bans across the room are actually Meta smart glasses, silently recording everything. The creep factor just multiplied.
Enter Nearby Glasses, a free Android app that scans for Bluetooth signals from smart glasses made by Meta, Luxottica, and Snap. When it detects nearby recording-capable eyewear, you get a push notification warning that “Smart Glasses are probably nearby.” Think of it as a digital sixth sense for the surveillance age.
Swiss sociologist and hobbyist coder Yves Jeanrenaud built this counter-surveillance tool as what he calls “a tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech.” The app works by scanning Bluetooth Low Energy advertising frames for manufacturer IDs that smart glasses broadcast to connect with phones and other devices.
The Reality Check You Need
Perfect protection doesn’t exist here. The app throws false positives when it spots Meta Quest VR headsets or smartwatches that share manufacturer IDs with smart glasses. More problematic: anyone wearing smart glasses can simply disable Bluetooth to go completely undetected. The app also remains Android-only, leaving iPhone users without defense options.
Why This Matters Beyond Paranoia
This isn’t Google Glass déjà vu from 2014. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses look indistinguishable from regular eyewear and feature LED recording indicators that can be disabled. Reports of harassment in massage parlors and other private spaces have created legitimate anxiety about covert recording. The New York Times even reported Meta testing facial recognition features that could identify strangers automatically.
The Bigger Privacy Battle
Your smartphone already tracks more than you realize, but at least you chose to carry it. Smart glasses represent ambient surveillance you never consented to. Jeanrenaud’s app joins a growing ecosystem of grassroots privacy tools built by researchers rather than corporations—because tech giants rarely prioritize your comfort over their data collection ambitions.
The privacy-versus-convenience war isn’t ending anytime soon. But tools like Nearby Glasses prove you don’t have to accept surveillance tech just because Silicon Valley calls it inevitable. Sometimes resistance starts with a simple notification on your phone.
