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Nearby Glasses

Smart Glasses are often hard to spot. This app scans for their Bluetooth ID.
This app attempts to detect smart glasses nearby and warn you.⚠WARNING!⚠
HARASSING someone because you think they are wearing a covert surveillance device can be a criminal offence. It may even be a more serious offence than using such a device. Please seek legal advise regarding your local laws on this matter.
⚠DO NOT HARASS ANYONE AT ALL⚠This app has one sole purpose: Look for smart glasses nearby and warn you.This app notifies you when smart glasses are nearby. It uses company identificators in the Bluetooth LE 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.The app’s author takes no liability whatsoever for this app nor it’s functionality. Use at your own risk. By technical design, detecting Bluetooth LE devices might sometimes just not work as expected.
False positives are likely. This means, the app Nearby Glasses may notify you of smart glasses nearby when there might be in fact a VR headset of the same manufacturer or another product of that company’s breed. It may also miss smart glasses nearby.However, this app is free and open source, you may review the code, change it and reuse it (under the AGPL3 license).Nearby Glasses does not store any details about you or collects any information about you or your phone. There are no telemetry, no ads, and no other nuisance.If you choose to store (export) the logfile, that is completely up to you and your liability where this data go to. The logs are recorded only locally and not automatically shared with anyone. They do contain little sensitive data; in fact, only the manufacturer ID codes of BLE devices encountered.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.Please do not act rashly. Think before you act upon any messages (not only from this app).Why?
  • I consider smart glasses an intolerable intrusion, consent neglecting, horrible piece of tech that is already used for making various and tons of equally truely disgusting 'content'.
  • Some smart glasses feature small LED signifying a recording is going on. But this is easily disabled, whilst manufacturers claim to prevent that and take no responsibility at all (tech tends to do that for decades now).
  • Smart glasses have been used for instant facial recognition before and reportedly will be out of the box. This puts a lot of people in danger.
How?It's a simple rather heuristic approach. Our approach comes from the Bluetooth SIG assigned numbers repo. Following this, the manufacturer company's name shows up as number codes in the packet advertising header (ADV) of BLE beacons. They are immutable and mandatory. Of course, manufacturers also have other products that come with Bluetooth and therefore their ID, e.g. VR Headsets. Therefore, using these company ID codes for the app's scanning process is prone to false positives. But if you can't see someone wearing an Occulus Rift around you and there are no buildings where they could hide, chances are good that it's smart glasses instead.According to the Bluetooth SIG assigned numbers repo, we may use these company IDs.I hope this is useful for someone.for more, see https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses/

Versions

Although APK downloads are available below to give you the choice, you should be aware that by installing that way you will not receive update notifications and it's a less secure way to download. We recommend that you install the F-Droid client and use that.

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  • Version 1.0.11 (12) suggested Added on Oct 14, 2026

    This version requires Android 8.0 or newer.

    It is built and signed by the original developer, and guaranteed to correspond to this source tarball.

    Permissions
    • access approximate location only in the foreground
      This app can get your approximate location from location services while the app is in use. Location services for your device must be turned on for the app to get location.
    • access precise location only in the foreground
      This app can get your precise location from location services while the app is in use. Location services for your device must be turned on for the app to get location. This may increase battery usage.
    • pair with Bluetooth devices
      Allows the app to view the configuration of the Bluetooth on the phone, and to make and accept connections with paired devices.
    • access Bluetooth settings
      Allows the app to configure the local Bluetooth phone, and to discover and pair with remote devices.
    • connect to paired Bluetooth devices
      Allows the app to connect to paired Bluetooth devices
    • discover and pair nearby Bluetooth devices
      Allows the app to discover and pair nearby Bluetooth devices
    • run foreground service
      Allows the app to make use of foreground services.
    • run foreground service with the type "connectedDevice"
      Allows the app to make use of foreground services with the type "connectedDevice"
    • show notifications
      Allows the app to show notifications
    • ch.pocketpc.nearbyglasses.DYNAMIC_RECEIVER_NOT_EXPORTED_PERMISSION

    Download APK 1.5 MiB PGP Signature | Build Log