Hidden Camera Detector: New App Alerts You If Someone’s Wearing Smart Glasses Nearby

With wearable gadgets sporting built-in cameras becoming more common, a Swiss developer has come up with an unusual way to protect your privacy. He’s released an app called Nearby Glasses that alerts you if someone around you is using smart glasses.

Lately, there’s been a growing number of complaints about covert recording in public places. Smart glasses makers typically equip their devices with LED indicators that light up when the camera is active, but as it turns out, many owners find ways to disable or cover these lights, making the recording process completely unnoticeable. Nearby Glasses works like a Bluetooth beacon scanner—since all smart glasses, like many other gadgets, constantly transmit special data packets to pair with a phone. These packets contain a unique company identifier assigned by the Bluetooth SIG, and there’s no way to hide this signal, as it’s part of the BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) protocol.

The app scans the airwaves and checks any IDs it finds against its database. If it gets a match and the signal is strong enough, the user receives an alert. Detection range varies from 3 to 15 meters, depending on whether you're indoors or outside. The utility’s settings let you tweak the sensitivity. Set the threshold to -60 dBm, and the app will only react to devices that are really close; go with -90 dBm, and the scanning radius expands to 30–40 meters—though you’ll run a higher risk of false alarms.

Nearby Glasses isn’t a camera detector per se; it’s a Bluetooth beacon detector. So it can make mistakes, mistaking other gadgets from the same brands for glasses—like Oculus VR headsets, fitness trackers, or even someone else’s smartphone.

The app itself is free on Google Play and as an APK on GitHub. It runs in the background, doesn’t collect any personal data, shows no ads, and its source code is open. Down the line, the developer plans to add iOS support and teach the app to recognize other wearable devices with built-in cameras, including smart pins and badges.

Would you actually use an app like this in your daily life, or do you think the whole 'being secretly filmed through smart glasses' thing is overblown? Drop your thoughts in the comments.