A new app that alerts you when someone nearby is wearing smart glasses just launched, and it's already reigniting the debate over always-on recording devices. The hobbyist-built detector uses Bluetooth signals to identify Meta Ray-Bans, Snap Spectacles, and similar wearables within range - a grassroots response to mounting concerns that camera-equipped eyewear is turning public spaces into surveillance zones. As tech giants push deeper into wearable AI, this DIY counter-surveillance tool reveals how uneasy people remain about being recorded without consent.
The app, which quietly scans for Bluetooth signals from smart glasses models, represents a new front in the battle over wearable surveillance. While Meta and Snap have poured billions into making camera-equipped eyewear mainstream, a solo developer just proved that detecting them is surprisingly straightforward.
The tool works by identifying the unique Bluetooth signatures that smart glasses broadcast to pair with phones and sync data. Meta's Ray-Ban Stories and the newer Ray-Ban Meta glasses, along with Snap's Spectacles, all emit detectable wireless signals that the app can recognize within typical Bluetooth range - roughly 30 feet in most environments.
What makes this particularly timely is the explosion in smart glasses adoption over the past year. Meta reportedly shipped over 700,000 Ray-Ban smart glasses in 2025, while Snap launched its fifth-generation Spectacles with AI-powered features last fall. The devices have moved from novelty to increasingly common sight on streets, in cafes, and at events.
But that ubiquity comes with a privacy cost that many people didn't sign up for. Unlike smartphones that people visibly hold up to record, smart glasses capture video and audio while looking indistinguishable from regular eyewear - at least from a distance. Sure, there's usually a small LED indicator when recording, but privacy researchers have repeatedly demonstrated how easy those lights are to miss, cover, or simply ignore in bright environments.
