Nearby Glasses app for spotting smart glasses arrives on Android and iOS

Nearby Glasses, an open-source app that scans for smart glasses in the vicinity and warns the user, has become available for Android and iOS, according to gigazine.net. The app is intended to alert people when devices such as camera-equipped eyewear may be nearby.

The app identifies smart glasses by scanning Bluetooth Low Energy company IDs assigned by the Bluetooth SIG. Among the IDs it targets are those of Meta Platforms, Luxottica Group, the maker of Meta Ray-Bans, Snapchat, which makes Spectacles, and Zhuhai Jieli Technology, whose IDs cover Rogbird VisionPro and Rollme VistaView.

Detection also relies on device names including rayban, ray-ban and HeyCyan, along with a primary UUID tied to specific smart glasses. The app issues an alert when a BLE device's RSSI exceeds a default threshold of -75dBm, a range the developer describes as roughly 10 to 15 meters in open space and 3 to 10 meters indoors.

Availability and settings

The Android version is distributed through Google Play, F-Droid, Accrescent and GitHub releases, while the iOS version is on the Apple App Store. A default "canary mode" displays a yellow canary that changes pose when smart glasses are detected.

Users can adjust the RSSI threshold, language, notification and canary cooldowns, ignored MAC addresses, logging and company ID overrides. The developer, Yves Jeanrenaud, cautions that the app is imperfect and may produce false positives, and notes that harassing people presumed to be wearing smart glasses may be a crime.

Smart glasses are becoming more common while raising privacy concerns over video recording. Some models carry a recording LED that can be easily disabled, which the developer says only serves to shield manufacturers from responsibility.