You’re waiting for the subway when a man across the platform adjusts his sunglasses and angles his face toward the carriage. The tiny glass lens catches the fluorescent light and, for a second, you realize you may have just been recorded. I felt that small, private alarm you don’t get from a phone—only from the thought that someone could be filming you without asking.
I want to walk you through the small tool that can turn that feeling into a signal. I’ll tell you what it does, what it misses, and where the real danger lives—because this is a privacy fight that you can engage with, not just worry about.
A woman at a coffee shop casually folds her Ray-Bans and taps the temple — then goes back to her laptop.
Those frames could be ordinary sunglasses, or they could be smart glasses from Meta, sold under Ray-Ban and Oakley and made by EssilorLuxottica. Last year the maker of those brands sold more than seven million units, a surge that has pushed camera-equipped eyewear from novelty into everyday streetwear. That shift matters because these devices hide powerful tech—microphones, speakers, AI helpers and tiny cameras—behind an unremarkable silhouette.
Enter Nearby Glasses: a small app that listens for the Bluetooth advertising frames smart glasses broadcast and warns you when one is nearby. You can think of it as a pocket radar; it won’t stop the camera, but it will tell you it’s close enough to matter. I’ve tried tools like this before—some are noisy, some are silent—but this one is simple by design: scan, match makers’ IDs, alert.
How does Nearby Glasses detect smart glasses?
The developer, Yves Jeanrenaud, built the app to scan Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) advertising frames and compare them to a directory of manufacturer IDs. He used public registries to identify signals tied to Meta, Snap and Luxottica Group. When the app sees a matching signature it sends an alert so you know a device that could record is within Bluetooth range.
An employee at a spa was filmed without consent; a CBP agent wore smart glasses on duty — both were reported events.
Stories like these—reported by outlets that tracked misuse—are the reason Jeanrenaud started building Nearby Glasses. He told 404 Media the app is “a tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech.” I don’t pretend the app is a legal shield or a perfect fix. It creates awareness, which changes how you act in a room.
There are limits. Jeanrenaud admits the app will sometimes flag the wrong device—VR headsets or other BLE gadgets can trigger false positives. That’s not a bug so much as a design reality: BLE advertising wasn’t created to identify cameras, and manufacturers don’t have to broadcast “I am recording.”
Can smart glasses record you without consent?
Technically yes. The physical camera exists and can capture video; whether that’s legal depends on location, expectations of privacy and local law. The larger worry now is not just recording but identification. The New York Times reported that Meta has been developing a facial-recognition feature called Name Tag to let wearers get names and details about people they see. If that is deployed, a recording becomes a searchable identifier.
A programmer testing the app posted updates on Bluesky while pushing code to GitHub.
Nearby Glasses is available on the Google Play Store and its code lives on GitHub; Jeanrenaud announced an iOS port is in progress on Bluesky. That makes the project both a consumer tool and an open experiment: anyone can inspect the code, test it, or fork it. That transparency is rare—but not a cure—because an open-source detector still depends on what devices choose to reveal.
Think of the app as a privacy smoke alarm: it won’t stop the fire, but it gives you time to move. Use it to change behavior—move seats, ask a question, create distance—or to prompt a conversation about what should be recorded in public spaces.
Is Nearby Glasses available for iPhone?
Not yet as a native iOS app—the developer said an iOS port is being worked on. For now Android users can download it from Google Play and examine the repository on GitHub; iPhone owners will need to wait for the port or use other signals (visible camera lenses, behavior, or direct questions) to judge whether they’re near a recording device.
A policymaker in a hearing room raises the question: when does convenience become surveillance?
This is where the debate gets sharp. Companies such as Meta and Snap are pushing hardware into daily use; Apple, Google and Samsung are reportedly exploring similar moves. When camera-equipped glasses are common and small, the practical line between convenience and invasive surveillance shifts. You and I will be part of defining that boundary—by the laws we demand and the social norms we enforce.
If you carry Nearby Glasses, you’re choosing to act on suspicion instead of sitting with it. If you don’t, you’re still making a choice—one that assumes the presence of cameras won’t matter. Both are political acts in a world where tech companies and eyewear conglomerates reshape what “private” looks like.
So will you use a simple scanner, raise a public complaint, or ask for new rules to keep faces from becoming searchable commodities?