New App 'ZuckOff' Detects Meta's Camera Glasses Nearby

A free app called ZuckOff climbed back up the App Store charts this afternoon after a Hacker News post about it pulled in more than 160 points and 60-plus comments in under an hour. What it does is narrow but useful: it listens for the Bluetooth signal that Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta and Snap Spectacles broadcast and tells you when a pair is somewhere nearby. It can't see what the camera sees, and it can't confirm the camera is even on. It just catches the radio chatter the glasses can't help making.

• ZuckOff was built by Pawel Szydlowski, a Polish developer who bought several models of camera glasses and catalogued the Bluetooth fingerprints each one broadcasts.
• The app matches those fingerprints against known manufacturer codes for Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta, Meta's other wearables and Snap Spectacles, then estimates how close the pair is from signal strength.
• It launched on Apple's App Store last month and has picked up roughly 5,000 users, briefly cracking the top 100 of the Utilities chart; a Pro tier at $9.99 a year adds background alerts when the app isn't open.
• EU regulators have reportedly reached out to Szydlowski for information about how the app works, according to reporting picked up this week.

How does a phone app spot glasses it can't see?

Bluetooth Low Energy devices don't stay quiet. To pair with a phone, sync data or just announce themselves, they broadcast small advertising packets that include a manufacturer identifier, a short code assigned to the company that made the chip. ZuckOff scans for those packets and checks the identifier against a list it maintains: 0x0D53 for Luxottica, which makes Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta under license, 0x058E for Meta's own wearables line, and 0x03C2 for Snap Spectacles. A fourth code, 0xFD5F, covers Oculus-linked service UUIDs and gets flagged at lower confidence since it's shared more broadly across Meta's hardware.

RelatedNYPD, DHS Memos Call Meta's Ray-Ban Glasses a Security Threat

None of this requires pairing, hacking, or even being on the same network. Bluetooth advertising is public by design, which is exactly why it works as a detector and exactly why it can't do more than detect. Szydlowski's own documentation is upfront about the gap: the glasses are "loudest," meaning most reliably caught, right when they power on, pair, or come out of the charging case. A pair that's already been worn and connected for a while can go quieter and slip past a scan.

Why is a month-old app suddenly everywhere?

Meta's smart-glasses line has been the company's fastest-growing hardware bet, and the backlash has grown alongside it. This site covered internal NYPD and DHS memos on September 8 that flagged Ray-Ban Meta glasses as a security concern for officers, and complaints about people being filmed in gyms, bars and changing rooms without realizing it have been circulating on social media for months. ZuckOff gives that anxiety something concrete to point at. It's not the first privacy tool aimed at wearable cameras, but it's the first one simple enough that a stranger can pull it up, glance at a screen, and get a plain yes-or-no answer.

The timing also lines up with reporting, first from The Information and picked up by TechCrunch this week, that Meta is preparing a camera-free version of its smart glasses, built around six microphones and a side button for its AI assistant instead of a lens. Reality Labs, the division that builds the glasses, has continued losing money by the billions, and Meta's stock is down roughly 13% over the past year. A camera-free SKU reads less like an accessibility play and more like a hedge against exactly the kind of pushback ZuckOff represents.

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What ZuckOff actually sees

What can't it tell you?

This is the part that's easy to skip past in a viral headline. ZuckOff cannot confirm the camera is recording, cannot identify who's wearing the glasses, and cannot show what's being captured. Bluetooth presence and active recording are two different things, and the app is honest about that limitation in its own onboarding screens. A pair sitting untouched in someone's bag will still ping if its Bluetooth radio is awake. A pair that's been paired for hours and gone quiet on the radio side might slip past a scan entirely while its camera is running the whole time. Treat it as a probabilistic nudge, not a scanner that proves anything in either direction.

How the story developed

1. Aug 2026ZuckOff launches on Apple's App Storefree, with a paid Pro tier for background alerts
2. Sep 8, 2026NYPD and DHS memos call Ray-Ban Meta glasses a security threatcovered on GenZTech
3. Sep 17, 2026Boing Boing, Slashdot and Digital Trends cover ZuckOffapp passes 5,000 users
4. Sep 21, 2026Hacker News post on ZuckOff tops 160 points in under an hourEU regulators reportedly contact the developer

Our take

ZuckOff is a clever, narrow fix for a problem Meta created by shipping a camera that looks exactly like an ordinary pair of Ray-Bans. The app's honesty about its own limits is what makes it credible rather than gimmicky. It doesn't claim to catch every recording, and it shouldn't be treated as legal proof of anything. What it does well is make an invisible risk visible enough that people start asking the question at all, which is arguably more of a behavior change than any amount of policy language buried in Meta's privacy settings ever produced.

Original analysis by GenZTech, based on reporting from Boing Boing, Slashdot, Digital Trends and TechCrunch. Read more at zuckoff.app