Signals intelligence for everyone — iOS
Smart glasses look like glasses. Pocket cams clip to shirts. AI pendants record all day. Counterlens listens to the radio signals capture hardware can't help leaking — and maps it around you, with the evidence to back every alert.
Smart glasses stopped being a novelty somewhere between 2024 and now. Meta and EssilorLuxottica sold 7 million pairs in 2025 alone — more than triple the year before — and are scaling production toward 20 million a year. Meta holds over two-thirds of the market. This isn't a gadget story anymore. It's the ordinary eyewear on the face across from you.
That was the whole social contract. Someone raised a phone, and you knew — you could step out of frame, object, or ask them to stop. Consent was possible because capture was visible.
Now the camera is a pair of Wayfarers. The only signal left is a small indicator LED: defeatable with a sticker, invisible in sunlight or from an angle, and entirely under the wearer's control. You cannot object to what you cannot perceive. That's the gap — not that the glasses exist, but that consent quietly became impossible.
Instagram moved to crack down on men covertly filming women with Ray-Ban Metas. The press now has a name for it: "pervert glasses." Fortune
German rights group HateAid filed a criminal complaint against Meta, Ray-Ban and retailers, arguing the glasses are an illegal covert-recording device. Reuters
Sensitive recordings captured by the glasses were routed to human workers for annotation. Privacy Guides
Your eyes are outmatched. Your phone's radio isn't. Camera glasses, pocket cams and AI recorders all leak Bluetooth identity — Counterlens listens for it, and shows you what's around you and the people with you.
Every blip is graded — confirmed, probable, or possible — and every alert opens to the raw radio evidence that produced it. No black-box fear. Tap a device for what it can capture, how to tell it's recording, and a hot/cold locator to walk it down.
Advertised name, manufacturer ID, service UUIDs, the exact rule that matched — one tap away on every alert. Audit the radar like an engineer.
GoPro-class cameras broadcast state bits. When the encoder-busy flag is set, Counterlens shows ACTIVE CAPTURE LIKELY — a live readout no other scanner ships.
Other scanners flag sleeping VR headsets as "smart glasses nearby." Counterlens identifies Quest-family hardware and files it as informational — never an alarm.
A guided sweep for rentals, greenrooms, and locker areas that ends in a shareable report card — including what a passive sweep can't rule out. Start it from the Action Button.
Geiger-style ticks speed up as you close in. Sweep a rental, a greenroom, a locker row — and walk down the broadcasting camera.
Sipper, Balanced, or Aggressive — plain-language battery tradeoffs instead of mystery drain. Your gear? Mute it with one tap.
Two Meta Quest headsets in the room, both detected and marked Confirmed — and the counter still reads 0 capture-capable devices. That's the app refusing to cry wolf on hardware that isn't eyewear. Tap through and it shows you the rule it matched, the advertised name, the company ID, and the timestamp it was first heard.
Silent by design — watch the numbers, not a voiceover.
"Radio ID verified" means the manufacturer identifier comes from the official Bluetooth registry or a primary vendor spec. Heuristic entries match on advertised names and are graded lower — honestly — until verified captures land in a database update.
No app can hear a radio that isn't talking. We'd rather you know exactly when the radar protects you than feel a false calm. This candor is the product.
Meta glasses broadcast at power-on, pairing, and case-open — then can go radio-quiet once connected to their owner's phone. A calm radar is awareness, not a guarantee.
A blip means capture-capable hardware is near — not that you're being filmed. Counterlens grades confidence and shows recording tells per device instead of shouting.
A $5 hobby board can imitate any advertisement. Treat every detection as advisory information, never as proof — and distrust any app that claims otherwise.
| Capability | Counterlens | Single-brand scanners | Subscription scanners |
|---|---|---|---|
| Device coverage | 27 signatures · 6 classes | 4–5 brands, glasses only | Meta-focused |
| VR headsets classified (not false-alarmed) | YES — dedicated class | Flags Quests as glasses | NO |
| Confidence tiers + raw evidence | YES | Partial | NO |
| Active-capture state (Open GoPro bits) | YES | NO | NO |
| AI recorder pendants (Plaud, Limitless…) | YES | NO | NO |
| Sentry mode for venues | YES | NO | NO |
| Hot/cold locator with haptics | YES | NO | NO |
| Guided room sweep + shareable report | YES | NO | NO |
| Action Button & Shortcuts | Scan · Sweep · Sentry | Varies | NO |
| Battery scan profiles | 3 profiles, documented | Unstated | Unstated |
| Honest coverage-window education | In-app field guide | Disclaimer only | NO |
| Pricing model | One-time purchase | One-time purchase | Weekly subscription |
| Minimum iOS | iOS 17 | iOS 18 | iOS 16 |
Category comparison based on public App Store listings, published hands-on reviews, and app documentation as of July 2026.
Camera glasses are chattiest at entrances — power-on, case-open, first pairing. Prop a phone or iPad by the door and Sentry Mode turns those bursts into a big, glanceable status with an event log and an optional chime.
Counterlens listens to advertisement packets that devices broadcast publicly and unencrypted to everyone in radio range — the same packets your phone processes constantly to find headphones. It never connects, pairs, intercepts communications, or interferes. Detection is lawful listening; what you do with the information is on you, and local recording laws vary.
No — and nobody's app can. Meta glasses broadcast reliably at power-on, pairing, and case-open, then can go quiet while worn and connected. Counterlens is honest about this window, and its coverage of action cams, pendants, and lesser-known glasses is broad precisely so the radar stays useful in the real world.
Because Meta's VR headsets share manufacturer radio IDs with Meta's wearables, and naive scanners match on the ID alone. Counterlens carries a dedicated Quest signature and files it as "VR headset — not glasses," informational only. Your sleeping Quest will never wake your radar.
BLE scanning has a real cost, so it's yours to dial: Sipper duty-cycles (10 s of every 30 s), Balanced runs continuous deduplicated scanning, Aggressive processes every packet. Background alerting uses iOS's filtered scanning, which is lighter still.
Yes — any hobbyist microcontroller can imitate advertisement packets. That's physics, not a flaw we'll hide: every detection carries its raw evidence and a confidence grade, and the app tells you to treat hits as advisory, never as proof.
On the roadmap. The signature database is plain JSON and portable by design.
Buy it once, own it. No subscription, no account, no data collected.
iPhone & iPad · iOS 17 or later.