Android app detects nearby smart glasses

Smart glasses such as Meta's are becoming popular, with seven million sold in 2025 by eyewear multinational EssilorLuxottica under the Ray-Ban and Oakleys brands. Less conspicious than previous generations, the newer models are easier to sneak into places they shouldn't be. It's easy to record people covertly in public. Meta is planning to integrate facial recognition, too, further corroding everyone's privacy and wellbeing as part of its general mission of processing humanity into a data trough for its advertizers. But they depend on Bluetooth for connectivity, which means they can be detected. Yves Jeanrenaud's Nearby Glasses is an app that does just that. It's availabe on Android (and soon on iOS), with the source code at Github.

This app notifies you when smart glasses are nearby. It uses company identificators in the Bluetooth data sent out by these. Therefore, there likely are false positives (e.g. from VR headsets). Hence, please proceed with caution when approaching a person nearby wearing glasses. They might just be regular glasses, despite this app's warning. …

Use with extreme caution! As stated before: There is no guarantee that detected smart glasses are really nearby. It might be another device looking technically (on the BLE adv level) similar to smart glasses.

"A tiny part of resistance against surveillance tech," Jeanrenaud told 404 Media. … "This is a tech solution to a social problem exaggerated by tech. I do not want to promote techsolutionism, nor do I want people to feel falsely secure. It's still imperfect."

If it's inevitable, legal, and generally ethical to record in public spaces, the alliance between big tech and small creep is troublesome. Just days ago, members of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's entourage failed to remove their smart glasses in court and were threatened by the judge with contempt charges.

At the center of the trial is the question of whether social media companies deliberately designed their platforms to hook young people, and the case's outcome could affect thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies. The 20-year-old plaintiff, identified by the initials "KGM" or "Kaley," alleges that she developed mental health issues from a social media addiction. TikTok and Snap settled with the plaintiff before the trial began. 

Previously:
• Ray Ban's Meta glasses