I doubt many people had a smart glasses-sniffing app hitting the top three on the iOS App Store on their 2026 bingo card, but here we are. Smart glasses are clearly a concern for lots of people, and “Antizuck” is reaping the benefits.
Antizuck, in case you missed it, is a $3 app on the App Store that sniffs out Bluetooth signals. The idea here is that you can automatically and effectively identify smart glasses near you without having to keep a watchful eye on what people are wearing. Last week, much to my surprise, it hit number three among paid apps on the App Store, and as of this writing, it’s still there.
Naturally, as Gizmodo’s resident smart glasses guy, I had to try it for myself. The results were, well, interesting.
Bluetooth sniffing like no one’s watching
The good news about the Antizuck app is that it works—at least sometimes. After I downloaded it and granted the requisite permissions, it recognized a pair of smart Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses I had on hand.
In addition to smart glasses locations, you also get a breakdown of their proximity. It’s a range, so don’t expect exact science. Devices will be presented as “0 to 6 feet” or “6 to 25 feet.” I’m not so sure that even those ranges are always accurate, though. Sometimes, even when I was less than a foot away from my phone, the range came in as 6 to 25 feet. So just be mindful of that if you’re hoping for reliable distances.
There’s also a neat signal field that shows relative proximity on a radar-y interface. Detected smart glasses appear as little red blips, while non-smart glasses’ Bluetooth signals appear as grey dots. It’s a little weird to track all sorts of Bluetooth devices in an app that’s meant to be an antidote to glassholes, but that’s just my opinion.
Antizuck has a “sightings” tab, as well, where you can dig in a little further to detected devices. Here you’ll see information on why the device was flagged; a timeline showing when you first saw the device, along with other data; and a verdict on whether Antizuck thinks it’s a pair of smart glasses. That’s somehow both more and less than I would have expected from a $3 app.
If you noticed, I said Antizuck works sometimes. That’s because there were instances when I opened Meta’s smart glasses expecting Antizuck to recognize them right away, but for some reason they just… didn’t. Antizuck was good at recognizing Meta’s smart glasses right out of the case, but if I put them down, causing them to go into sleep mode, and then picked them back up, they would disappear from the radar.
I was able to identify smart glasses in the wild on my commute home in New York City, too, with Antizuck informing me that a couple of pairs were more than 25 feet away, but I was in Union Square—a crowded area—and it was impossible to tell where exactly the alleged glassholes were.
In my experience, Antizuck is an imperfect tool, though it could be useful. If you were in a more intimate setting—for example, a spa or a gym—where someone really shouldn’t be recording, it would be great to know whether there are smart glasses around that can discreetly capture videos or photos. In a crowded area, though, the app’s utility diminishes greatly.
Say you’re walking through a crowded park, or some other place where masses of people gather, like I was, and you get a notification that there are smart glasses nearby. What exactly are you supposed to do with that information? I guess you could scan the area like a hawk, but that seems like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack, if said needle were actually a pair of AI glasses with cameras.
There’s an additional problem here, too. While the Antizuck app can identify quite a few smart glasses—particularly those made by Meta, thanks to a specific Bluetooth signature—it can’t identify all pairs. The app claims that it can clock all of Meta’s smart glasses, Snap Specs, RayNeo smart glasses, and Amazon Echo Frames. That leaves out some bigger players, such as Rokid and Solos, as well as looming giants like Samsung and Google, though I assume Antizuck could spin something up for those smart glasses as well.
I ran a test out of curiosity to see whether the app would notify me about devices not on that list. Alas, I got no warning when I placed my phone near a pair from Rokid and a pair from Xgimi, though in Antizuck’s defense, the latter doesn’t have a camera. It did find first-party Meta Fury glasses right away, though.
Okay, but now what?
As I said, there is some utility in Antizuck, but that utility will largely depend on context. If you’re in a spot where you know smart glasses absolutely should not be worn, it could tip you off that you’re at risk of being recorded. In a more public, crowded setting, it feels a little less effective, though I suppose it could help inform you if you’re being approached by someone wearing them.
There’s the added problem of what exactly to do if you get pinged about smart glasses. You could walk away, removing yourself from the situation (that’s what I would recommend), or, I guess, confront someone —though who knows where that’s going to lead you, and that’s even if you can find the right person.
You also have to use discretion. As bad as smart glasses can be in certain people’s hands—and they have been, more than once—not everyone is using them nefariously. Maybe they’re just listening to music or taking a call. It’s hard to know beyond a shadow of a doubt.
If anything, though, Antizuck proves that there’s real concern about smart glasses, and given various recent disconcerting news, I don’t blame people for being worried. It’s a sign of the times, and unfortunately, we are in a golden age for glassholes.
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