How to detect smart glasses

1. Look: what camera glasses have that ordinary glasses do not

• Thicker temple arms. Electronics and batteries live in the arms, which are noticeably chunkier than on ordinary frames.
• A small round lens at the outer edge of one lens rim (Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta HSTN) or on the bridge (Oakley Meta Vanguard, per Meta's product imagery).
• A small LED opposite the lens. On Meta's designs the capture LED sits at the other outer corner.
• A charging case shaped like a spectacle case with a charge indicator.
• Voice or touch controls. Camera AI glasses are operated by a wake phrase or a tap on the temple.

Display-only glasses such as the Even Realities G1 are designed to look ordinary and, per the manufacturer's specification, have no camera; in low light you may notice a faint green glow inside the lenses. Sourced facts for each product.

2. Watch the capture light

Known fact Meta states that each of its AI glasses has a white capture LED that blinks briefly for a photo and keeps blinking while video is recorded, and that the camera is disabled if the glasses detect the LED has been covered or tampered with. Known fact Snap states that its Specs have an LED indicator that lights up when recording is taking place.

Inference For those products the light is the most reliable everyday cue that capture is happening. It is small, designed to be seen from the front, and a manufacturer statement describes intended behaviour rather than every condition; treat it as strong but not absolute.

3. Use Bluetooth as a supporting signal

Smart glasses talk to their owner's phone over Bluetooth, and many Bluetooth Low Energy devices announce themselves with short broadcasts that any nearby phone can receive. An app can compare those broadcasts with identifiers whose ownership is public: the Bluetooth SIG publishes which company registered each company identifier and 16-bit service UUID, and Meta, Snap, Even Realities and Vuzix all hold registrations.

That is how Smart Glasses Scanner works. Four things limit what any such app can conclude:

• Known fact iOS exposes eight advertisement fields and a signal strength, and no hardware address. Background scanning is filtered, coalesced and slower.
• Known fact A registration is not a broadcast. A company identifier registered to Meta Platforms Technologies may appear on Quest headsets and controllers as well as glasses. Which products broadcast it, and in which states, is only learned by testing.
• Inference Connected accessories may go quiet. Many BLE devices stop advertising once connected to their host. Whether a given pair of glasses does this while worn is the central question in our test plan.
• Known fact No manufacturer documents a "recording" field. Camera and microphone state are not described in any advertisement we have read about, and we have observed none; capture has to be judged by eye.

A detection from such an app therefore means "compatible Bluetooth evidence was observed", with the evidence shown so you can weigh it. It is a prompt for attention, not a verdict.

Can you detect Ray-Ban Meta glasses?

Not established yet. Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 1 and Gen 2) have a camera (yes, manufacturer-stated), microphones and a capture LED, and they use Bluetooth to pair with the Meta AI app. Two identifiers registered to Meta Platforms Technologies (company identifier 0x058E and service UUID 0xFD5F) and one registered to Luxottica (0x0D53) are under research. Whether the glasses broadcast any of them while worn and connected to their owner's phone has not been measured by us; Ray-Ban Meta is the first hardware in our validation plan and testing is in progress. By eye: thick temples, a round lens at one outer corner and the white LED at the other.

Ray-Ban Meta: detection status, facts and identifiers

4. What no method can tell you

• That someone is recording right now, unless you can see the capture light on a product that has one.
• Who owns a detected device.
• That no smart glasses are present. Silence over Bluetooth is not absence.

If the concern is a classroom, an exam hall or a changing room, the practical answer is usually a policy about camera-capable devices plus clear communication, with detection as an aid. The guide for teachers works through this.

Related

• How Smart Glasses Scanner works
• False positives and false negatives
• Testing status — what is being measured and when results will appear
• FAQ